1.5 - 2 mile wifi link

R

ring.of.steel

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Hi, i need to be able to get wifi access about 2miles away from my house, with my laptop. I was thinking about putting a huge 24dbi dish on my roof, do you think this would do the trick?

Thanks
 
it may be worth waiting for wi-max. Don't want to irradiated yourself!
 
Any ideas how much wi-max is going to cost? i cant find much about it.
 
With long distance links you are going to need los (line of sight) and a directional antenna on both ends. This will provide a narrow coverage area and severely limited portability making portable use rather cumbersome if not infeasible. Your best bet is going to be an EVDO card and a VPN if you need access to your home network.
 
Most likely, you should be able to get a good link.

What type of radio and antenna on the AP side?
What card and length of coax on your side?
 
More info needed. Terrain? Is LOS available? Will you be in motion on the far end? Is there a budget?
 
You might be able to get it working with a decent AP (Cisco) and the 24dbi dish but you are going to need LOS and its only going to be in one direction. Cisco makes an excellent outdoor bridge that would work for you, we have setup a few for clients that didn't want to run fiber between buildings.
 
The terrain is a city thats on a hill, im at the bottom the other side would be at the top, there are a few trees but not hundreds, as its on a hill the los is not too good, but about 200m up the road there is a los. I dont really want to spend more then $400, so i would prefer to spend as much on antennas as possible for the time being. Its more like 1 - 1.5 miles then 2.
 
For some reason, i dont think a tube of crisps will reach 2 miles up a hill.
 
If this is just for something in your home, you could do a point to point link like this.
Just take a WRT54G or something at the end at your house, and then distribute it out like any old connection.

Cellular cards are worse than dial up IMO, unless you have 3G access.
 
$400, eh? You're not making it easy are ya... :D
Do you have any equipment to start with?
 
I have a couple of wrtg54G's, a cicso aironet 1000. Not much really. The thing im worried about is all the trees etc in the way, and the fact that its on a hill.
 
Your situation and your budget lead me to believe that this is essentially impossible. Especially with the trees and such, to get a good signal over such distance, you'd need a transmitter strong enough to probably require FCC approval. Plus to be two-way, it gets considerably more complex. All in all not good.
 
Satellite might be the best way.
Expensive, and all in all, not very fast, either.

Only if you had 3G... getting a wireless card would work well though (Using one in Dallas/Chicago or whatever- they are pretty fast...)
 
We do have 3G here, but i dont really fancy paying $40pm
 
That's 25 months (more than 2 years) of service in your $1000 budget. Just go for it.
 
Maybe, i allready pay a fortune for my cable connection. How slow is 3G for a VPN?
 
just curious what is 2 miles away from the house that you need to be connected?
 
word i would have thought most work places or school would have wireless, or some kind of broadband. or at least steal wifi from a neighbor or something.
 
Last summer I pulled off a signal transfer from a mile away using a Trendnet USB wireless adaptor mounted on a small sat TV dish. The target was up a hill (in the mountains) with nothing obstructing the line of sight. Worked really well until the clouds would roll in and I would lose signal. It is doable :cool:

andyroo said:
cantenna? lol
Click to expand...
 
The general idea, is to be able to access all my files work etc from school, without trying to get round the school firewall itself, because a vpn is out of the quesion. I thought if i could send the signal up to my mates house who lives 30 yards or so from school, then somehow relay it using a second antenna to my laptop at school. See attached Image

wifi.jpg


Heres my 20 second visio diagram. Im convinced somehow i can get this to work without too much effort.
 
Maybe you would somehow bridge two wireless routers with those large outdoor antennas you mentioned in your original post between your house and you're friends house.
 
I could try and setup a few wireless repeaters with big antennas on the way, in peoples houses.
 
does hamachi work? then u shouldn't have to worry bout school firewall.
 
It'd be far simpler to just setup a web or file server on your home machine on a port your ISP doesn't block.
 
Yes but that is violating school policy, which was not the idea. My isp doesnt block any ports.
 
ring.of.steel said:
Yes but that is violating school policy, which was not the idea. My isp doesnt block any ports.
Click to expand...
Is it a major company? Then I guarantee you they block port 80, as well as probably most other common server ports like 21 and 22. Either way, what port you run it on doesn't matter - just install Apache/PHP on your machine and write yourself a nice little file browsing script (protected by a .htaccess file if you want privacy) and use that to access your files. An upload script is even simpler.
 
It is virgin media, i guess virgin is one of the biggest companies there is. They do not block ports becuase i have been hosting off the line for the past 5 years...
 
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