[Asterisk-Users] OT: HOWTO: Create a 90mbit bonded link 600 metre s away with Cat 3 or telco wire [long]

Thu Apr 6 15:31:27 MST 2006

Or, you could use a Corinex Phone Line Bridge which runs 128Mbits up to 2000
feet. They also have a co-ax version which is 200mbits and goes 4000 feet...
About $300 for both ends.

http://www.corinex.com/web/docx.nsf/(w)/eng-corinex_av_phoneline_ethernet_bridge

> I was given the challenge recently of creating a LAN-LAN bridge between two
> buildings several
> hundred metres from each other, using only existing Cat 3 wiring and without
> having to resort
> to an expensive and finicky 5 Ghz wireless link. I was able to create a 90
> megabit link for 
> about $3,000 Cdn with new PC's, CentOS 4.1, and the newly avaliable Black
> Box VDSL Ethernet 
> Extender, which supports 30 megabits over a single twisted pair. 
> 
> This is relevant to the list because I have seen many posts with people
> facing the same 
> kind of challenge deploying Asterisk in remote locations. In my case, I am
> running 
> ~40 Snom 360's from the remote building to where my Asterisk server is, and
> it's working
> fine. 
> 
> Hope this helps someone. Yay Linux. 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------------
> HOWTO: Create a bonded Ethernet link over common Cat 3 or telco-grade cable
> up to 1.9 km 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------------
> 
> Abstract: Using the newly-available Black Box LB300A VDSL Ethernet Extenders
> and Linux bonding,
> it is possible to create a protocol-independent, redundant, high speed
> Ethernet bridge using common
> Cat 3 or telco-grade cabling at ranges from 600 metres (1,970 feet) to 1.9
> km (6,233 feet), 
> with bandwidth ranging from 90 megabits to 3 megabits. The characteristic of
> the link is that of
> a regular bridged LAN, and is suitable for high speed or latency sensitive
> applications such as Voice
> over IP.
> 
> HARDWARE:
> 
> 2 X 4-PCI slot PC's
> 6 X Black Box LB300A VDSL Ethernet Extenders 
> 8 X PCI Ethernet cards
> http://www.blackbox.com/Catalog/Detail.aspx?cid=425,1423,1424&mid=4946
> RJ-12 crimper
> RJ-12 6-conductor plugs (will work with RJ-11)
> 
> SOFTWARE:
> 
> CentOS 4.1 or any Linux distro that supports bonding and bridging
> 
> 
> 1. Install hardware on both machines
> 
> In my case, I used an ASUS A8V with an Athlon XP 3000+ with 4) 3C905CX
> cards. The reason I selected 
> this board was because there is 5 avaliable PCI slots. Install the cards 0-3
> in slots 0-3. 
> 
> 2. Disable onboard hardware
> 
> Because the NIC's will require an IRQ each, disable the following resources:
> 
> 	a) Onboard NIC
> 	b) Onboard sound
> 	c) Onboard USB
> 	d) Onboard legacy ports 
> 	e) Set "F1 on error" or "halt on errors" to off in the BIOS so you
> can boot headless
> 	
> 3. Install your OS
> 
> I chose CentOS 4.1 as my distro, I really like it. I installed CentOS as a
> "server" with everything 
> disabled except "development". I also set the detected NIC's to
> "unconfigured" - no DHCP, 
> no start at boot.
> 
> 4. Boot. Do an ifconfig eth0, eth1, eth2, eth3 to make sure all of the NIC's
> are running OK
> 
> 5. Determine which NIC is eth0, eth1, eth2, eth3. eth0 will be the interface
> to the LAN and 
> eth1,2,3 will be the bonded link. Both the bonded link and the LAN interface
> will be bridged together.
> 
> Easy enough - plug in a network cable into a NIC and run dhclient. Once you
> get an IP from your 
> DHCP server you can use ifconfig to determine whihc one got the IP. Repeat
> for each NIC. Once you 
> have detemined which physical device is which, I used a sharpie to label
> each port so I wouldn't 
> get confused.
> 
> 6. Install bridging support, if your distro does not support it OOB.
> Fortunately, CentOS does so 
> no problem there.
> 
> 7. Install bridge-utils to configure the bridge. Cake in CentOS: "yum
> install bridge-utils"
> 
> 8. Configure the bonding config
> 
> In /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts make valid entries for your bonded device
> and each slave.
> 
> ifcfg-bond0:
> 
> DEVICE=bond0
> ONBOOT=no
> BOOTPROTO=none
> 
> ifcfg-eth1/2/3:
> 
> DEVICE=eth1/2/3 (replace as nessisary)
> USERCTL=no
> ONBOOT=yes
> MASTER=bond0
> SLAVE=yes
> BOOTPROTO=none
> 
> 9. Startup script /etc/rc.d/rc.local:
> 
> modprobe bonding miimon=1*
> brctl addbr br0
> brctl addif br0 eth0
> sleep 10s**
> brctl addif br0 bond0
> 
> *miimon=1 means disable the port after one second on link down. This is the
> redundant part. If
> one of your links fail, the other two will keep working. 
> 
> ** The 'sleep' is to allow the bridge to stabilize. In testing, the bridge
> did not work if each 
> brctl statement immediately followed each other.
> 
> 10. Test without VDSL extenders
> 
> Obtain or make 3 X Ethernet crossover cables. Plug 1 PC's eth0 port into the
> source LAN. Plug the 
> 3 X cross over cables into eth1,2,3 on both PC's. Plug a device into the 2nd
> PC's eth0 with a 
> crossover cable, or plug the second PC into a switch then plug your devices
> into the same switch. 
> Make sure both PC's have a keyboard and monitor so you can see what's going
> on. Finally, plug
> crossover cables into each PC's eth1, eth2 & eth3
> 
> On both PC's run tcpdump -i br0 from the console . In my case, I saw traffic
> right away. Do some 
> test pings from and to your devices, and try to get an IP address (dhcp)
> from the "remote" LAN. 
> 
> Troubleshooting:
> 
> *Link up at 100base-T FD?
> *ifconfig eth1, eth2, eth3 shows as SLAVE?
> *same ifconfig shows TX and RX values > 0
> *try mii-tool -F 100baseT-FD
> 
> 11. Rack up and plug in the PC's in the source and destination LAN's.
> Terminate the Cat 3 with the
> RJ-11 or 12 plugs on both LAN's. The pinout is undocumented in the extremely
> brief manual that comes 
> with the LB-300 so straight-through on all pins was used. Undoubtedly, it
> follows the telco standard of
> the middle pins, but this is untested. Plug the freshly-terminated plugs
> into the RJ12 port on
> the LB-300. Once you are done, use 1 metre patch cables to plug the RJ45
> ports on the LB-300 into
> eth1, eth2, and eth3. Make sure the switch on the LB-300 is set to "Loc"
> (LOCAL) on the source LAN's 
> LB-3090's and "Rmt" (REMOTE) on the destination LAN's LB-300. 
> 
> 12. Power up and watch for the blinkenlights
> 
> Troubleshooting:
> 
> *Same as troubleshooting above?
> *Look at the lights on the top of the LB-300's. They should give you an
> indication as to what's
> happening to the LB-300 according to the troubleshooting chart on the LB-300
> manual.
> 
> 13. Enjoy your link! 
> 
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