In the fall of 1999 I started a new job as the Network Administrator for an animal feed manufacturer with 4 locations. Two of the locations were fairly remote, 1.5 to 2 hours away, and were connected by low speed leased lines as the connectivity was for dumb terminals to the AS/400. The closest location was 3 miles away, and was connected via a T1 as it housed the operations center and dispatch for feed truck delivery coordination and needed better and faster connectivity to HQ. If memory serves the T1 was about $1500/month. After a bit (a lot) of research, I found a point-to-point wireless bridge that passed data at 20Mbps, I think. I don't remember the price, I just know that it paid for itself in a matter of months after disconnecting the T1. The installation was the fun part. Being young (at the time) and adventurous, myself and a coworker ran Ethernet cable up an elevator shaft to the top of the mill closest to our HQ building. Now, this was not your typical hotel or office building elevator, this was a 4 x 4 metal box connected to a cable that you had to press and hold the switch to make it move and release when you wanted it to stop, and, it bounced a few times when it stopped which was a little frightening the first couple of times. The other mill didn't have an elevator, it required climbing up ladders mounted to the side of the mill to the top, putting the wireless equipment in a bag and using a pulley to hoist it up. The necessary cable was run down the side of the mill in conduit and into the mill's control room with a freshly drilled hole after a masonry bit was purchased and a hammer drill procured from the maintenance department. The conduit was then attached to the side of the mill on a windy day bouncing around in a basket on the end of a crane -- one of us held on to the building as best we could while the other screwed in the brackets that held the conduit in place. Once it was physically installed, we split up with one of us at the top of each mill, pointed and aligned the radios, and somehow, some way, it worked. I still drive by one of the mills as I live fairly close, and, while the wireless radio antennas have been replaced with newer models, I can see it from the road and it reminds me of that install.
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