Point to Point network connection

digidude

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OK, heres the plan, to wirelessly connect a house thats 112M away from my house to my wireless network. The other house is slightly higher than mine, but there is a tree in between. My house is the one on the right of the picture. Ive read about cantennaes and stuff, but i cant replace the aerial on my router either as i use wireless in the house, and a directional cantennae would disable that

im open to any ideas people can think of

there wont be hardly any traffic passing over this connection, no internet traffic, no high speed downloads or streaming of any kind, but it does need to be a stable connection for what itll be doing

cheers for looking :)

wifilosma0.jpg
 
it would be fairly hard to maintain a connection like this.

You may have luck with a parabolic ariel, however you would need a fairly good line of site to do this, and rely on no interference etc.

One option is to get hold of two old sky dishes, plonk a usb wifi stick on each one and point the dishes at eachother. Try it in your garden and you will get a signal, then move them apart to see if the signal is maintained.
 
it would be fairly hard to maintain a connection like this.

You may have luck with a parabolic ariel, however you would need a fairly good line of site to do this, and rely on no interference etc.

One option is to get hold of two old sky dishes, plonk a usb wifi stick on each one and point the dishes at eachother. Try it in your garden and you will get a signal, then move them apart to see if the signal is maintained.

hmmmm, you may be onto something there m8 :)

i could use a sky dish (i have lots of them lol) with a usb stick on my house, then a yagi type aerial on the other. even better would be an actual router aerial on the dish, then i may be able to play with the dipole of the yagi to tune it

any ideas how id connect 2 wireless routers to the same network, as last time i tried everything went tits up lol
 
for two wireless routers, you are best getting two of the same model that support WDS bridging. That should mean you can maintain a connection between the two and get suppport from the manufacturer if it doesnt work (having two different peices of kit would mean they would blame eachother if it doesnt work).

Bear in mind, this will probably be all living outdoors?
 
Instead of using two wireless routers you could use a wireless repeater instead. These are much easier to set up because they are designed to simply receive and re-transmit signals.

Something like - http://www.dlink.com/products/resource.asp?pid=267&rid=790&sec=0

That has a range of upto 400M outside but unfortunately only seems to works with specific dlink kit. I'm sure there'll be other similar products that will work with whatever router you have though
 
there are loads of wireless repeaters and extenders on the market. They essentially amplify a signal for you and use WDS to bridge between your original router and the extended network.

There is a lot of kit available that will pump a wlan around a campus or office that will happily live outdoors, but its pricey. I thought about doing it at my place so I could get free wifi at the pub, but then I found there was a free wlan there anyway.
 
Distance is not going to be a problem for a wireless connection - the problem will be LOS - that's if you are using a directional antenna.

a Uni-directional setup might be better with a deflector (some people say they work well) to stop the wi-fi signal leaking backwards.

A WAG54G with these deflectors in bridging mode at both locations might be the way forward as the wifi pattern will be spread and objects in the way (in your case a tree) might not matter as much.

Be aware that anyone in-between these routers will be able to see the network - so make sure you lock it down well - as attacks can knock out routers and signals can drop.

Here's a thread on here about the booster http://www.digitalworldz.co.uk/index.php?threads/174654/&highlight=boost+wifi
 
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you wanting to perv on that neighbour of yours m8, with webcam again LOL
 
of course distance is a problem for a wifi connection - it is for anything using the airwaves to transmit data. Other factors will be the environment, how many over head cables, how many underground cables, someone heating food in a microwave and cell phone masts etc.

Loss of signal is not an issue here, the actual problem you face with a wlan and with anything using the airwaves is signal to noise ratio (SNR).

Having a directional antenna would not help either - to attain the connection you need these would need to be setup in series, to get the best out of them you would need to know the strength at which the transmit and receive and space them apart accordingly. For the sake of saving money (directional antennas are not cheap) any ariel would do, the one on a router would be fine, this is an omni directional ariel.

Also, dont use the WAG54G - I have had these before and found them awful to use and maintain. A pair of good MIMO routers would be the best choice if they support WDS, as this will automatically increase your wlan range.

Finally, how would using a directional antenna avoid obstacles? Trees will have very little affect on a wlan (unless they are made of metal?) and the signal wouldnt spread out - you are advocating the use of a uni-directional antenna afterall.
 
OK.. my reply was a lazy one. Wifi distance is not a problem with some antennas getting ranges of up to 30 miles (the last time I was on the scene anyway)

a LOS with a cantenna from such a close range may have issues with the tree.

112 meters is not that far and I know some WAP's will cover that with just a client at the other end to connect. So having 2 AP's in WDS mode it'll piss it.
 
30 miles yes, but with no concept of Qos or a decent speed on the connection.

Dont forget wlan doesnt really use the line of sight concept, the wlan is a bubble, not a direct line. This is why a reflector behind a directional antenna (?) wouldnt do anything. Using a parabolic collector, like an old sky dish, would be much more suitable.
 
fthere wont be hardly any traffic passing over this connection, no internet traffic, no high speed downloads or streaming of any kind, but it does need to be a stable connection for what itll be doing

Wait, just use broadband then? lol A VPN would work fine if there's hardly any traffic going over it.
 
the first item would probably be useless for this application - I have a stronger wifi ariel sat on my desk right now. Essentially, this is just an expensive waterproof ariel. The second item is very good, the output on this is much stronger, however I doubt this will acheive your aims - this is still only 15dbi and you can buy this sort of thing from Maplin for about £14 (the internal version, which is basically a mag mount with the same type of ariel). The third item is precisely the same thing I have already talked about here with two old sky dishes. However, this is still relatively low powered -I would assume this would stretch your wlan a bit, but I am not conviced the ariel will acheive your aims.

All in all, they appear to be very expensive for what they are and should probably be looked at if the parabolic antenna idea doesnt work.
 
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