a little wireless help... please

[joeyguy]

ok, here is the deal

i am having some trouble figuring out exactley what equipment to get to accomplish this

i am moving into an apartment in a small city which just so happens to be right next to a coffee shop (which provides free internet service, wirelessly, cast from the building and inside the building) that is literally like 100 feet away from the front door.

i havent moved in yet, but i stay here every once in a while because a friend lives here as well. and one of our mutual friends comes over and brings his laptop. from this laptop i can get on the internet on the second floor by the window closest to the coffee shop.

i have experimented a great deal with placement to find out what gets the best signal. i have demonstrated the signal strength with blue arrows in my diagram.

since im moving in, i'll be bringing the old desktop with me, and my room will be on the far side of the house (opposite end closest to the coffee shop). so, in order to get the wireless internet to feed all the way to room B, i am going to need to somehow recieve the internet through an antennae of some sort placed outside of the window or on top of the house, send it to a wan port on a router, and then run ethernet cables from the router in that room (room a) to room c and room b. the router will be wireless, but im pretty sure that wireless routers dont recieve wireless signals from other wireless routers. plus there's no way that i can really find out what kind of router they are using.

but i do know that this laptop can connect to it just fine. its a free service.

i just can't figure out what wireless device to buy that will act like a Wireless Lan card on a laptop/desktop. something like an antennae that i can attach outdoors (weather proof and what not). or even a device that does what i am talking about, and then buy an external weather proof antennae and attach the antennae to the device, and then run a ethernet cord from said device to router, and from router to pc.

is this possible? or am i just totally ignorant to the fact that maybe wireless routers can do exactley what im trying to accomplish?

thanks for any help and time, i appreciate it

-Joey

 

[bigstusexy]

Ahhhh... anyone? How legal/moral is this?

I'll just say its possible but... yeah I'm not sure if this is leagal/moral.

 

[BarneyGumble]

Set up an antenna array on the roof above room A. Then wire that directly into your computers. You can also syphon coffee directly from the shop using 150 feet of garden hose through the sewer and water lines that run underneith the city. The only hard part is going to be connecting the garden hose to the coffee/esspresso machine. On the other end, use a male/female connection on the south side of room C. Hook it to a filtered tap, through the bypass valve on Mr.Coffee 3000. That will give you the best coffee reception.

 

[Viper16]

Im going to asume you own the coffee shop and do not want to pay for another service....whew! now that thats out of the way, buy a pci wireless adapter and get an external adapter antenna (perferably a 15dbi antenna) and aim it outta the window, it will boost your signal immensily (sp!)..the cable to the antenna isn't very long, but should be enough. I have a hawkings antenna and love it greatly, of course I have my own internet service I pay for, and a coffee shop isn't nearby

 

[Malk-a-mite]

Leaving aside the moral issues of using the service in the first place.

Have you considered the security aspect of this operation.
Do you do online banking?
Check your credit card balance online?
Check your email via this wireless connection?
Ebay or Paypal (or anything that knows your bank routing information)?
Online chat maybe?

Because as we all know unsecure wireless connections coming out of coffee shops never have bored CompSci majors running sniffer programs because there are bored...

 

[joeyguy]

i spoke with the coffee shop, and they said they do not mind if i do this.
they did tell me not to basically... hog the connection, which i can understand
so they are perfectly fine with me using a computer or two

the thing is, all of the antennae i find have a 3 meter chord... room c is like 20 to 30 feet from the window...

im still confused on what to get

what about the range expander?

 

[joeyguy]

Set up an antenna array on the roof above room A. Then wire that directly into your computers. You can also syphon coffee directly from the shop using 150 feet of garden hose through the sewer and water lines that run underneith the city. The only hard part is going to be connecting the garden hose to the coffee/esspresso machine. On the other end, use a male/female connection on the south side of room C. Hook it to a filtered tap, through the bypass valve on Mr.Coffee 3000. That will give you the best coffee reception.

although your reply was humorous, i didnt appreciate your sarcasm

good lookin out for the coffee shop tho...

 

[joeyguy]

Ahhhh... anyone? How legal/moral is this?

I'll just say its possible but... yeah I'm not sure if this is leagal/moral.

um... i asked the coffee shop and they are ok with it
im not sure how its illegal... at all in the first place...

in fact, they are perfectly aware of their network being unsecure, and that its accessible wirelessly from outside of the building. students often come to the shop and do their homework there. there are even places to sit outisde to do this.

but i did ask, just in case this was a bad idea.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Assuming it's legit with the beanery...you'd want to get a wireless bridge, such as the Linksys WET54GS5
They also recently came out with some newer bridges that flip the wireless into power over ethernet...in case you want to keep things neat between the windows you set the catchers mit in, and the other end of your apartment (where you'd put another poe device to end the signal, flip back into ethernet)

 

[joeyguy]

Assuming it's legit with the beanery...you'd want to get a wireless bridge, such as the Linksys WET54GS5
They also recently came out with some newer bridges that flip the wireless into power over ethernet...in case you want to keep things neat between the windows you set the catchers mit in, and the other end of your apartment (where you'd put another poe device to end the signal, flip back into ethernet)

thanks for the help!

and the newer bridge that you mention sounds really cool