long range wireless?

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rogue_jedi

Supreme [H]ardness
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does anyone know of a way that i could set up a wireless network with a 1km range? i want to connect to my friend's house (set up a recording studio there, want to be able to work on stuff here) it is fairly line of sight but there are trees/some houses in the way. my brother and i were thinking about using directional antennas on each end but we don't know of any routers/cards that support aftermarket antennas or any good antennas to use in the first place.

we also don't have much experience with wireless (we could stress a gigE connection so we don't use wireless) though 802.11a/b would probably be enough for this.

thanks.
 
two tripods (or other mounting equipment), two sights, a compass, and two "cantennas" (google for "802.11b cantenna" for several pages full of instructions on how to make them).
 
At a km, 802.11 isn't "fairly line of sight" technology. You could get you a tripod, build you a cantenna, buy and run some transmission cable, and the more than likely result would be you'll spend some decent money on a complete waste of time. Get you a telescope, or good binoculars, and figure out how your going to get true line of sight, unobstructed. Work on that, then worry about your gear.
 
Originally posted by ktwebb
At a km, 802.11 isn't "fairly line of sight" technology. You could get you a tripod, build you a cantenna, buy and run some transmission cable, and the more than likely result would be you'll spend some decent money on a complete waste of time. Get you a telescope, or good binoculars, and figure out how your going to get true line of sight, unobstructed. Work on that, then worry about your gear.
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True. You do need very good, clear LOS for something like this. I must've missed that in the original post. Rooftop to rooftop may be a possibility.
 
Line of sight is your friend. With directional antenna's if you can see it you can ping it :)
 
alright, thanks for the help. i'll see if we can get line-of-sight when i get a chance.

sounds like it just might work, though.
 
Originally posted by rogue_jedi
alright, thanks for the help. i'll see if we can get line-of-sight when i get a chance.

sounds like it just might work, though.
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Over at the dslreports forums they have a section on wireless networking. People over their have gotten much longer range than you are trying to get. If you have any questions they will be able to help you alot, they pretty much helped me with my rural wirelss rig. 4 mile link from the town to my fathers house.
 
You're not going to hit 1km w/o LOS using 802.11a/b/g gear. What you need is to use 900Mhz equipment... it will be able to punch through some stuff (like trees). You might be suprised, but old wireless networking equipment runs on 900Mhz.... it runs at a much slower speeds (1-2Mb/sec) than todays stuff, but it is out there.... check eBay. I believe that some vendors still do sell 900Mhz equipment, but now they realize that they have something.... a technology that is able to work in a non-LOS environment, so they charge more for it.

Finding the old stuff is getting harder and harder to do because it's hidden behind tons of 900Mhz CPUs that are still for sale. I did a quick ebay search and there are two Airlan products for sale right now..... do some research and check them out.
 
Originally posted by marshac
You're not going to hit 1km w/o LOS using 802.11a/b/g gear. What you need is to use 900Mhz equipment... it will be able to punch through some stuff (like trees). You might be suprised, but old wireless networking equipment runs on 900Mhz.... it runs at a much slower speeds (1-2Mb/sec) than todays stuff, but it is out there.... check eBay. I believe that some vendors still do sell 900Mhz equipment, but now they realize that they have something.... a technology that is able to work in a non-LOS environment, so they charge more for it.

Finding the old stuff is getting harder and harder to do because it's hidden behind tons of 900Mhz CPUs that are still for sale. I did a quick ebay search and there are two Airlan products for sale right now..... do some research and check them out.
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The old Ricochet modems can also be used in point-to-point mode, and there are Linux drivers for using them in this manner. They operate in this frequency range, and can have a directional antenna added in the same way one can add an antenna to PCMCIA cards.
 
900 Mhz gear will still need line of sight at 1 km. It does penetrate a bit better than 2.4 Ghz however marshac over emphasizes the difference. It won't penetrate canopy at a km.

People over their have gotten much longer range than you are trying to get. If you have any questions they will be able to help you alot
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Psst... People over here have too.
 
It might be worth your while to just have 2 wireless access points, then ask your neighbors if you can put wireless repeaters on their roofs or something like that along the way.
 
we'd thought about that but we don't know any of the people inbetween our houses:(

some of them would probably just take the WAP and sell it after we gave it to them (i don't live in a very nice part of town, we have some apartment buildings right up the street, and we've had 1 bike stolen 2 times, and some shovels/sleds disappear) so that's not a route we'd take unless we KNEW the person well.
 
Hmm.. in that case, maybe you should buy a simple scope and strap it onto some kind of can-antenna or whatever you might be using for the long range wireless and use that for aiming it just right at each other.
 
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