P2P with my neighbour

So, this is my first post.. Kinda...

My friend and I live two blocks appart and have the same ISP. In fact, the ISP provided a tower for the neighborhood exclusively so, in theory, the say, we should be able to use a nice piece of the bandwidth to transfer files p2p.

My question is, now that we both have linked our drives with ftp, so that's cleared, is there a way to link both pcs as kind of a local network to get the most out of the tower conection? What do I need from my ISP?

Thanks in advance. Any info you ask for will be provided asap

By the way. The country is Argentina. No laws to worry about for now

Not sure of what software to use but make sure you use SFTP not FTP.

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I doubt it, your traffic is likely going to go directly to the gateway then come back to your friend rather than just to the local tower or exchange. But I don't know.

Anyway if you want to try I'd suggest setting up a vpn connection and then just running whatever you want though that.

Conections are up, servers are running, all is good and shiny. But I´m still limited to upload speeds on the server side. The client can't take advantage of the intranet link speeds.

We managed to get access to the ISP network and saw that despite never leaving the intranet when tracing from client to server with nmap (two hop distance), there's something going on in the tower that prevents us to fully take advantage of the broadband. Turns out the solution might be connecting both of out Ubiquiti antenas to the same Rocket in the ISP node tower.
Talking with ISP's TechSupport at the moment.

So, I'm on hold right now....
Tech Support will get in touch with me soon... I hope...

Finally got the call. This is what the guy from the ISP told me I can get the link to work by setting up a new connection that bypasses my router (which logs with a PPoE account) and connect my server directly to the ubiquity device. This way I would be able to use the full bandwidth. The downside is, I would be giving up the internet connection and that's not something I can do.

The other solution is to get a spare NanoStation LocoM5 (I have one M5 and one M3) and setup a p2p link between both fully functional networks. Apparently, more advanced hardware is needed to do this as my dd-wrt D-Link dir-600 won't be able to handle the DHCP conflicts...

It's kindof a dead end. But I'll see how to jump this wall with the options I've been given.

Will post further advances

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If you traffic is not metered than sure an rsync would work. It the initial setup that can suck. Best to mirror 2 drives locally then take them to say your house and you friends and start the sync.

Using an ISP means you're at their whims for bandwidth. If you live in Australia it could be 0.1Mbps UP like me.

Unless you're swapping movies and porn like all guys do it will be ok. If you need to swap large files daily then there is a problem.

Actually what we ultimately want to acomply is exactly that. A shared media library full of games, movies, TVShows, and music. This was just the beginning.
As of now, we can access our respective Plex servers (running on RaspberryPi2) and we only need this one last step to be able to link our servers (preferably our networks) so we can exchange files freely (yeah, large files -no porn-)

If there is a way in which I could configure my network (and his) to be bridged but at the same time each having their independent local network and internet conection I´d love to see it. Although investing more money in Cisco equipment ej. isn't really an option.

I guess that's the thing with p2p networks. If you had 100 friends in this friend group the upload limit would be mitigated somewhat but with only 2 points its network speed.

Hacker side. Are you line of sight to each other from your roofs ? Maybe a wireless router with directional antenna could let you setup your own network. Two blocks is a lot but line of site and it could be done.

We are able to make a setup as you say. Straight line, free of chimneys or buildings.
What should I be looking for? Network bridges, p2p configs?

Having never needed to do it I dont know for sure. It would be just network cards with external antennas manually set to fixed IP address or routers with external antennas manually set.

It's not plug and play but totally doable. Half the fun is learning to do it.

I agree

of course you would need directional access points, most likely 2.4 GHz to go the distance. And they would have interference and have blips whenever one of those pterodactyls in Australia flies by.

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I planned a similar thing out before, but never got around to build it for a lack of money as a student. Now I don't live there anymore, so the whole story ends there for me.

But what I planned was this: Get two simple consumer WiFi access points, where at least one of them is able to function as a client that connects to another WiFi. If you can't find that, you can also connect a good USB-WiFi-adapter to your Raspberry Pi or another computer that acts as a router. Configuring the Pi to act as a router is really easy on Linux.

If you manage to find two WiFi access points that can work together, you can set one up at each house and replace their antennas (you will need access points that have removable antennas for that) with directional antennas. Those are fairly cheap, if you are looking at Yagi-style antennas. You could even build your own from some long nails and a piece of wood. If you're working with a WiFi access point and a computer that acts as a router (like a Raspberry Pi), you need a USB-WiFi-adapter that has a removable antenna as well of course (the one I linked does).

EDIT: I didn't mention this explicitly, but nothing stops you of course from using two Raspberry Pis with a USB-WiFI-adapter each. This is the most configuration work but allows you to customize every detail and gives you control over what your neighbor can do in your network (what he can access). Using firewall software like iptables you can control that exactly. Without that, it's basically like he and you share the same private network, e.g. like you are on the same WiFi.

After that, you configure your ISP's router with a static route that points to your WiFi access point. Basically a static route is an entry in the router that says that a certain network can be reached through a certain IP address. That IP address is the one that your WiFi access point to your neighbor gets from your ISP's router. The static route then tells all the computers in your home network that your neighbors home network is available over the WiFi access point.

You need to figure this out as well. 2.4 GHz is good for distance, some people achieved results like 10-15 miles, with fancy special antennas of course. If the distance is not a problem, even with a homemade antenna, you can think about 5 GHz. That will increase your speed by a lot but might not be possible depending on the distance. If you have access to good antennas, you can try that right away, but if let's say 20-50 Mbps are enough, 2.4 GHz is probably the safest option.

Also think about the fresnel zone, i.e. the distance to the ground. Depending on the distance to your neighbor and the frequency you decide to go for, you might need to put the antenna on the second floor or even on the roof, for best results.

Here is a little 5-minute sketch I made, that outlines the network configuration. It's really not that difficult as it sounds at first. You can easily make this work within a rainy afternoon (though sunny weather is better for the WiFi ;-) ).

Of course you also need to set up the WiFi between the two access points with the appropriate SSID, password and IPs etc. I would turn DHCP on those off and configure the 10.0.0.0/8 network with static IPs. Of course, your normal network (and your neighbor's one) can stay the same with normal DHCP. The static routes manage all the work to reach your neighbor.

Hope this is somewhat helpful. :)

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Hell Comfreak you excited me :)

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This is exactly what I had in mind! But had no idea how to articulate

Got on the right path I think, from this post where the best answer kind of suggests the same approach.

I have one Ubiquiti NanoStation LocoM5 and am trying to get a seccond one for my friend. This would be the hardware used to link both houses 250m appart. Luckily, our existing hardware allows the configurations you suggest above, such as static IPs.

I first nee to get a pair of radios or a seccond LocoM5. But seems like everything is on go for now.

@comfreak you're a gent. Thanks for the thorough response

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I am glad if I can help :-)

If you have any further question or get stuck, just post here and I will see what I can do ;-)

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