Question 1

I know line of site is key, but how much of throw can you get using two of these units as a bridge? Half mile? Quarter Mile certain? Or would a parabolic antenna be the only option?

Accepted Answer

I have a linksys e1000 set in a window and an engenius ens200 set 1500 ft away on the exterior of a friends house.  Of course this is direct line of sight. I consistently have signal of -56db and 150mbps. A few things to keep in mind: I live in a rural area where the 2.4 ghz band is not saturated, I would buy something that supports 5ghz band if 2.4 band is saturated. I'm using one ens200 to a linksys e1000, two ens200 will achieve greater distances as they are capable of 26dbm transmit. I believe e1000 transmits at 18dbm.  Short answer: two ens200 will have no problem at quarter mile line of sight accross un congested 2.4 ghz band.

Question 2

What is the secondary Ethernet connection for?

Accepted Answer

One is for power-over-ethernet, which is what is normally used to power the device using the adapter.  The other one is supposed to be a conventional LAN port - I haven't used it, so I don't know if it works or not. I just know that if you plug the POE cable into the wrong port, it won't power up :)  In fact, I don't recall seeing a separate connector for the DC power adapter directly on the device, which is what you'd need if you weren't using POE.

BTW, keep your ethernet cable between the POE adapter and the ENS200 as short as possible; I tried a situation where there was about 100' of cable between the two and the voltage drop was too great - the device wouldn't boot.  I redesigned the layout with a shorter cable and it worked fine.

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