Recommendation for site to site wireless bridge

I have a client with two offices 500 ft apart. Currently they have a site to site VPN over a 50/5 cable connection. Besides 5Mbps not being much bandwidth they also have issues with ESI VoIP phones, managed by another vendor, at the remote office. I've already implemented QoS and the bandwidth charts don't show the 5Mbps being utilized for any prolonged period. From what I've told the phones will randomly have the issue and it can go on for 30 min to an hour. It sounds like a provider issue as it only started occurring recently, and the VPN link has been in for 2 years.
 
What I want to do is put in a site to site wireless link. The Vyatta routers already run OSPF over the VPN so I can easily add another network with a lower cost so the VPN can be used as a fallback. What I am not sure is on which brand to go with for cost, reliability, and ease of installation. I've looked at Ruckus Wireless and Ubiquiti. With Ruckus the ZoneFlex 7731 looks to be the right product. Ubiquiti only seems to have larger dishes and product lines that overlap.
 
Basically I'm looking for recommendations from others who have implemented a wireless bridge and how it has worked out for them. I'm also wondering what happens during a heavy rain or snow storm. Will the link completely drop out or just slow down?

I've used this brand with good results:
 
http://www.engeniustech.com/business/Directory/business-networking/outdoor-access-points-client-bridges_c89_m331/

I engineer wireless bridges all the time - there are a few factors to consider.  The good news is that you're currently paying for an ISP connection - and that's an utter waste of money which plays nicely into the ROI for a good wireless link.
 
That said, what kind of performance are you looking for?  The range is pretty broad - from a pair of Ubiquiti radios which are wifi-based... no single chain over 65mbps, but aggregate for multiple transfers in the range of 300mbps... or if you want more, there's Ubiquiti's AirFiber which is about 700mbps symmetrical - a heck of a system for $3K.
 
If I'm installing for a client who wants near carrier grade - never failing bullet-proof high-bandwidth connections, I do a lot of Exalt.  For 500ft, it's nothing to put up a pair of radios that'll be as good as fiber.
 
Done well, you'll have no weather issues on a span of 500ft; I do installs over 10 miles that don't fail... for installs like your mentioned one - I've actually had more issues with over-driving AP's causing them to shut down forcing me to intentionally misalign just to bring RSL down a hair.

I was hoping for 300Mbps 802.11n speeds, which should provide 150Mbps actual bandwidth. The remote office wiring and computer setup is a mess. The company before me ran network cable outside / inside the office daisy chaining Netgear 5 port switches under desks. They also sold them a number of Dell Inspiron computers with 100Mbps network ports and loaded them with Win XP in 2010. It has been a slow process over the last 2 years to replace / update their infrastructure.
 
The buildings look to have a line of sight, but it might be partially blocked by the neighboring office roof. I need to go up in the attic and look out the window to find out for sure. How well will it work without a perfect line of sight?
 
The EnGenius ENS500 looks too good to be true at $70 for the ENS500 model. I usually install Cisco 1040/1140 APs for wireless access points, which run $300-500. When I've tried cheaper APs in the past they either need to be rebooted occasionally or die after a year or two. I would like to keep the cost down while still installing a quality product. Although for $150 it would be a good proof of concept if it worked for a year or two.

I've have two links at my own home (from house to dock1 and from dock1 to dock2) using somewhat older models from EnGenius and they just work.
 
If you are concerned about needing to reboot you can configure them to reboot themselves at a user define interval.

at 500' you should be decent even without clear LOS - although the clearer the better.
 
Engenius makes some good products - although these days I install a lot of Ubiquiti - they are great... and I've written about this a few times in the past here about how their products fix a major issue with handoff.  Their UniFi products are great for providing wifi for client devices.
 
For building to building links, a pair of nanostation M5's would probably work great and cost <$200

Ubiquiti is good stuff for sure. To gain some real world experience in my own home I replaced all the the indoor EnGenius WAPs with the UniFi LR units and they have been working very well.
 
But I was under the impression (and I might be out of date on this) that Ubiquiti was still working out the kinks on the zero handoff feature. No? Yes?

Ubiquity bullet or rocket with a directional antenna is a fantastic product the titanium is the one to go for and 5Ghz has less noise than 2.4. I have had these running over several kilometers. They are reasonably priced and have very intuitive configuration tools. Any of the ubiquity airmax products will be good. If you want serious bandwidth then the airfiber kit is awsome.

These guys ; Ubiquiti; are giving Cisco a run for their money.
 
Wondering if Cisco will be purchasing them (they tend to do stuff like that).

slyone said:

Ubiquity bullet or rocket with a directional antenna is a fantastic product the titanium is the one to go for and 5Ghz has less noise than 2.4. I have had these running over several kilometers. They are reasonably priced and have very intuitive configuration tools. Any of the ubiquity airmax products will be good. If you want serious bandwidth then the airfiber kit is awsome.

Click to expand...

 
Bullet is 1x1 not MIMO so while it's a decent and extremely cheap retrofit option for older equipment where you just need to replace a radio and not touch the existing antenna; it's rarely the best way to go for a fresh install.  Similarly the Rocket is great if you need to choose your own antennas and are setting up a base station of sorts or are building a hub site (generally where you'll have multiple radios co-located and will be setting up specific beam patterns with sector antennas) - but again, for a single PTP link, there are much better suited radios - simple/cheap/shorter distance would be the nanostation or nanostation loco (NS is slightly higher powered with a tighter beamwidth; the loco has a wider beam which can be good or bad depending on your goals) - or for a tight longer-distance run, even a couple nanobridges would be well suited.
 
For 500' you could probably leave the two nanostation locos pointed in the wrong direction and not optimized and still get a decent link - that's not asking a lot and the NSLM5 is perfect.  None of the other radios will get you any faster actually unless you go to airfiber - they have different purposes, but won't cost any less or perform any better for this particular case. 

I'm finally making progress on this project. I just received two Ubiquiti NanoStation M2 units. I went with the M2 over the M5 due to tree interference in the line of sight. By holding them approximately where they would be mounted I was able to hit the orange bar on the signal strength meter. The web interface shows 48-51db of signal strength. A ping test for a laptop shows 1-5ms of latency. I should have looked at the signal to noise ratio, but I feel like I am good to go.
 
Any brand preference on cable? I'm planning to order Sewell PureRun Solid STP UV Protect CMX cable and the shielded RJ45 connectors.

I use the ToughCable a lot from Ubiquiti since it performs well and it's easy to order at the same time as the radios - I have probably 6 boxes in the garage...  I've also used a Belden product that's shielded and outdoor rated. 
 
That Sewell stuff looks comparable to the ToughCable L1 (their lighter version) and looks like it'd be just fine.  Just know how to terminate it - you're really supposed to trim the foil to a point where you can fold it back on itself and have it make contact on the inside of the connector; the drain wire has a place on the connector that it should feed through and terminate as well (hopefully Sewell's is solid - some brands are braided which I don't like).  This is a lot to stuff into a connector - I've found that just a slight squeeze with a pair of duckbill pliers (no teeth - just smooth - and just a gentle squeeze) gets them into shape a little better to push right in.  I always test mine with a Fluke and I've never had a problem result from this.
 
When using something like the ToughCable L2 that has the plastic spline in the middle, you'll find that the spline makes things entirely too thick - I'll pull a bit on the spline with the same duckbill pliers to stretch/thin the plastic a little rather than just cut it so that just right where the connector goes, it narrows the required diameter enough to fit in.  I've gotten pretty good at it now - the additional shielding barely slows me down.

I looked at the ToughCable, but wasn't sure after reading about it turning green and cracking. Supposedly their current shipping version of the cable doesn't have this issue. I ordered the Sewell cable last night. The picture shows a solid drain wire. Additionally it comes in gray, which should blend better with the white siding. I'll keep your tips in mind when crimping the connectors on. Thanks!

The cracking issue was from the first batch - they since changed manufacturers completely and the new stuff seems to be pretty good - I like working with it over the Belden that some radios call for (if they specify a specific wire, given the cost of those systems, I use their preferred brand for warranty reasons). 
 
I got really screwed by that bad wire though - had to revisit a bunch of jobs for free to rewire - including having to rewire a whole 65' tower with several radios on it. 

The install was a success. I'm seeing a signal strength between -48dBm and -52dBm with the power turned down to 25dBm. This is over a 500ft distance through a tree. The horizontal and vertical strength differs between 2 and 4dBm. I'm assuming the tree / wind blowing the tree is playing a factor in the changing strength. The noise floor is -91dBm and the TX / RX rate hovers around 240Mbps.
 
On a file copy I'm averaging 9MB/s which is 18x more than the 0.5MB/s they were seeing over the VPN. Latency is averaging 2ms with an occasional spike to 7-11ms.