Best long distance base access

[bjlf]

What would be the best way to setup a remote radio dispatch using home station.

Dry phone pairs from remote to base?

OR

Some type of IP system?

We are looking to add a semi disaster drill where all radio traffic would still operate from original base, but be accessed from a remote location.

Thanks

[Bill_G]

If the station is within 1000 wire feet, you can use local "remote" control - a deskset with PTT, ground, speaker hi, and mic hi (if the mic hi is amplified in the deskset). You may have to work out hum issues.

OR

You can use tone control to an adapter panel connected to the radio over two wire or four wire telco lines for up to several thousand wire feet of cable, or through the telco system (if you can get leased lines)

OR

If you need to control a station miles away, you can use DSL through some kind of internet appliance like the NXU-2A or the IP223, or any number of other products.

OR

You can make an RF link between you control point and the station. Or a wifi link if possible.

[bjlf]

Were looking at 50-60 miles max.

Either leased telco or some type of internet based stuff.

[Bill_G]

Can you get DSL with static ip there, or is there internet present already? You need less than 100kbps up and down to work, and you can get by with even less if the appliance chosen supports it. If you use DSL, you'll probably need a vpn tunnel through a firewall to keep the link alive and protected. Or, you could do port forwarding through the DSL modem to drill through it's NAT. If you use the NXU-2a, and only have one site to control, you can use their PC client app as one end point. It can control several sites ... one at a time. And I can't get more than one occurrence of PCNXU to run at a time. But, it does work. It's about as cheap as it gets for internet links. Available from Tessco.

http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/nxu_2a/
http://www.tessco.com/products/displayP ... sku=380121

[CPIComm]

Leased lines if able as glitches in internet can be a problem.

[d119]

I agree with leased lines. But there are some caveats with leased lines:

1. They are expensive to set up. Generally, these types of circuits have to be "built" by the phone company, which involves them figuring out which wire pairs need to be used in the CO, which B-Boxes they route through, where to cross connect, etc.

2. Some telephone companies can be a royal pain in the ass to get these circuits from, as they have few people on staff that remember how to "build" them. Some telcos are so focused on POTS and DSL that anything "out of the ordinary" just isn't worth their time.

3. Depending on how many central offices (and/or local exchange carriers) the circuit routes through, the monthly cost can be quite exorbitant. I know a local police department pays $40/month just to go down the street (via AT&T). And I believe that circuit is within the same central office. I believe setup charges on it was $500 or so.

4. Inclement weather & flooded cable pairs can be a real problem for leased lines. This can be an even larger problem when said inclement weather increases your need for access to the remote base, yet you can't reach it because the weather took out out the leased lines.

[Bill_G]

I agree with leased lines. But there are some caveats with leased lines:

1. They are expensive to set up. Generally, these types of circuits have to be "built" by the phone company, which involves them figuring out which wire pairs need to be used in the CO, which B-Boxes they route through, where to cross connect, etc.

2. Some telephone companies can be a royal pain in the ass to get these circuits from, as they have few people on staff that remember how to "build" them. Some telcos are so focused on POTS and DSL that anything "out of the ordinary" just isn't worth their time.

3. Depending on how many central offices (and/or local exchange carriers) the circuit routes through, the monthly cost can be quite exorbitant. I know a local police department pays $40/month just to go down the street (via AT&T). And I believe that circuit is within the same central office. I believe setup charges on it was $500 or so.

4. Inclement weather & flooded cable pairs can be a real problem for leased lines. This can be an even larger problem when said inclement weather increases your need for access to the remote base, yet you can't reach it because the weather took out out the leased lines.

Yeah. Leased lines were nice, but as the telco's get out of the copper business, DSL is the best option these days. Market penetration for cellphones hit 50% CPO (cell phone only) a couple years ago, and the big carriers are dropping copper as fast as they can even in major metro areas. Look at the trouble people in Super Storm Sandy are having restoring land lines. Can't get them. They are being replaced with LTE to POTS converters.

That market shift is not necessarily a bad thing. Some of the new network appliances the LTE guys have make putting together a system a cinch. I forget the name of the OEM, but we used LTE wireless modems to tie a Trbo IP Site Connect system together for a national healthcare provider, and it worked out of the box. Their IT dept were being very territorial, and just could not understand what the purpose of this was, what we wanted, why we wanted outside access, etc, etc. I got it - patient record privacy, network security, all that stuff, is their world and we don't want to cause them any problems. So, we went around them, and used Verizon to knit it all together. Could not have been simpler. Plug in some ip addys, set the ports, aim all the sites back to the master, budda bing budda boom, they were talking. We rolled it out in less than a week.

But, whether you use DSL, fiber, or wireless, using an ip system puts you in charge. You design the network. You build it. You maintain it. Any problems you have are pretty straight forward to fix over the phone (or email) with the provider. And! You can get in from almost anywhere to make changes instead of having to involve the phone company. Welcome to the cloud.

[okto]

If you mainly need an audio link (not an actual control link), look into Echolink or IRLP.

[Bill_G]

Here is the Cradlepoint LTE product we used for several systems we needed connectivity, but couldn't get copper.

CradlePoint IBR650

The latest application was for the Hood To Coast race. More than a dozen UHF Trbo sites along the 200 mile route knit together with these where our own backbone wasn't present. Easy to deploy and manage.