Parent-Friendly Wireless Bridge To Span 500 Meters? 558
GonnaBRichYeahYeah! writes "My dad lives down a dirt road 500 meters off the main road. The cable company will not put cable down his lane for any less than the ridiculous sum of $10,000.
And he cannot get phone line DSL since he is so far away from the central terminal, so he relied on painful 22k/sec dial-up for access to the Internet.
He got sick of it and relies on Hughes satellite Internet, at $60/month, but he still has to be connected to a phone line to upload to the Internet. It's not a good solution, but better than dial-up.
His friend lives on the corner of the main drag with his lane and has cable, thus hi-speed Internet.
I suggested that he get a wireless access point, and put it at his friend's house and then get a wireless card for access. The problem is that no wireless routers go that far (max range of -N is 200 feet) and WiMax is too complex for a 70-year old man. Any suggestions from Slashdot crowd would be helpful." Plenty of people make wireless links over longer distances, but often they're not suited for people who want simplicity and reliability. What's the best out there right now?
Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Informative)
Hoe (one per helper)
500 meters of heavy duty conduit
500 meters of cable (recommend that you lay fiber at the same time)
Solution 1:
1a: Dig a long trench from the cable termination point down the dirt road to your father's house
1b: Dig a long trench from "the closest neighbour with cable internet" down the dirt road to your father's hose
Ensure that the trench is at least 18 inches deep, roughly 8 inches wide
2. Lay 500 meters of heavy duty conduit. Ensure that you are threading your cable through the conduit all the way along. Attempting to thread the cable AFTER the counduit has been completed may prove to be problematic.
3a: Call the cable company to connect the cable to the cable termination point. Begin paying monthly subscription to cable internet provider.
3b: If you've chosen to run the connection to your neighbhour's home, ensure that you don't piss him/her off. They are now your cable internet provider.
4. Profit $$$
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't forget to fill the trench after you've installed the conduit!
Failing to do so, may turn this solution into a bigger problem than simple "internet access"...
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Insightful)
For 500 meters?!?
Christ on a cracker.. rent a ditch witch [ditchwitch.com]!
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Insightful)
If it were me, I'd probably bring in a contractor to do it.
If you do consider this route, get local utilities to locate underground services for you - so that you don't accidentally dig up power/water. You shouldn't - we're talking a foot and a half, but...
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Informative)
And they recommend calling before you do any digging.
Better safe than sorry.
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Funny)
Aww yeah.
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Insightful)
One assumption you are all making is that he owns all 500 meters of the land between his place and his friend's place.
If you want to go the wireless route, I've had good luck with the antenna "amplifier" I built from this site. [freeantennas.com]
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Informative)
don't people google anymore before asking
Obligatory Chris Rock Joke Rewrite (Score:5, Funny)
Dad: "Here's twenty bucks, lay 500 meters of conduit to my house, b****!"
Re:Why not hoes? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:2)
David
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:3, Interesting)
Lay zero cable:
http://www.lightpointe.com/products/fl_100.cfm [lightpointe.com]
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Interesting)
I just emailed him, but
I actually did this before. It was with a pair of WAP11's (current at the time), a 24dBi parabolic, and a 19dBi panel. It was 100% reliable, except for a few circumstances.
After a year, a bamboo tree grew up through the line of site.
One end was in an office, and the WAP11 would overheat because the A/C was turned off on the weekends, and the cleaning crew would shut off the fan blowing on the AP.
In one strong wind, I found I hadn't secured the antenna well enough, and it turned.
They were all easy, obvious problems.
In his case, an AP with a high gain antenna on one end, and a decent antenna on the distant end attached to his wireless device would be fine.
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:4, Informative)
I mean.. You did consult the FCC tables for uncontrolled exposure at 2.4 GHz when setting up your little science project, right?
Of course you did. Or they wouldn't have approved your license request to run an experimental, (i.e. modified to no longer be type-accepted), (and ERP>1W ) setup in the 2.4 GHz band.
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, I consulted the charts, and even did the math myself to confirm that the charts were right.
a 20mw transmitter and 24dBi antenna puts it
Now, my 200mw transmitter with the 24dBi antenna is a wee bit against FCC rules in theory, but with loss in the cables, it may just be at the limit.
Since they were very directional antennas, it was a fairly safe bet they'd never notice anyways. Sitting behind either antenna, I could hear the signal (encrypted, of course). Standing on the ground immediately under the antenna, still with a clear view of the remote side, I couldn't detect it, nor anything at that particular frequency. I even did that with the 200mw transmitter and a 4.5dBi antenna. Only being maybe 15 feet or so below the real antenna was enough to be outside of the beam of the more diverse antenna.
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12215 [dealextreme.com]
Not sure if this is a gimmiky product or if it will really work.
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:3, Informative)
However, if you have a point-to-point wireless link with the same amplification on both ends, it can be useful. Don't overuse it though, as too much amplification will distort the signal, and disrupt other people's attempts to use nearby frequencies (even pretty far away).
Wifry: Less than $100 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:3, Interesting)
If you find DD-WRT to be stable (enough) for you, then I would suggest not changing.
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:4, Interesting)
I eventually switched to tomato for better QoS support and tomato has been rock solid.
It also seemed like dd-wrt development wasn't progressing very much, as there hadn't been an update in quite a while. Though I do note now that they finally made v24 an official release just recently, so things may have improved since then.
DD-WRT does have some features that tomato doesn't, though. If I needed any of those features I wouldn't hesitate using DD-WRT again. Though I might try OpenWRT first just because I haven't tried it yet.
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Informative)
Cable is considered low voltage, so in some states it does not have to be buried 18 inches. Also why would you dig a trench 8 inches wide? Rent a small trencher, it make about trench about 3-4 inches wide. Use a trench shovel to clear out the trench.
Also, if you are using PVC, if you pull the line through as you are gluing the conduit together, you stand a great chance of gluing your pull string in place. Best thing to do is to shoot a mouse through the pipe (a mouse is a special plug that almost exactly fits a conduit that you attach a very light weight pull string to. On the other end you use a shop-vac to suck it out).
I would also have a pull box installed every 100 meters. 500 meters would be one heck of a pull.
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:3, Informative)
New capacity, repairs, new technology (fiber?), etc. There's not much more frustrating than having to completely redo a good cable run 10 years down the road because someone neglected to pull a spare strand of string.
Also, responding to someone further up, just because you aren't required by code to bury your conduit 18" or more doesn't mean it's not a really good idea to do so. When someone decides to develop the acreage next door and the concrete trucks break up your cable in multiple spots, or it's so shallow that you dig into it planting trees, you won't be happy camper.
Do it like Cox. (Score:3, Informative)
The guy who serviced my house had what looked like a big pizza cutter on a stick. It buried the cable about two inches deep.
Conduit is neither required nor used for cable and phone in a residential setting. If you break it you patch it. This is simple and low cost.
Re:Do it like Cox. (Score:3, Interesting)
Since cables, even fiber, don't come in 500 meter lengths (1000' is standard for a box. With fiber you can also buy a 5000 spool, but that's not only overkill, but then you're not just renting a ditch which, but a spool truck as well, and adding rediculous delivery fees for the cable.
The only really managalbe solution is to use P2P wireless. You can get parabolic antaneas that are FCC licensed for those distances for a few hundred bucks each, and a pair of outdoor rated Cisco Aeronet APs. Your total would run you less than $2000, which is less than the fiber would cost (including someone with a splice kit to make the distance run feasable). You can find other products out there other than Cisco cheaper, but ourdoor rated units are hard to find, and antannea extenders to place an link outside for an inside located router would mitigate the cost difference.
Your biggest issue will likely be latency across that distance, combined with a strict requirement for line of sight.
On the other hand, your BEST option is likely cellular based broadband. Add a access card to your PC with a PCMCIA adapter and get an unlimited access account from your provider (should be less than $60/month) Use ICS in windows (I'd recomend linux, but this guy needed a SIMPLE solution, not a reliable and secure one...) to have multiple computers share the connection. Place the card in an el-cheapo PC that you don't use for anything else that runs quiet and green. For less than $400 in parts and the same per month rate, you can have decent speed internet (3G if you're licky, but even edge is better than nothing), at least until the FCC forces your cable company or phone company to hook you up, since the USF will eventually require it.
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:4, Interesting)
Just the other day I saw two geniuses from Comcast running cable through the lawn of my condo complex. I'm just waiting to see what happens when the landscapers come by to mow the lawn. I hope they don't charge $10k to do that.
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:4, Funny)
but it allows them to get service up to you now and bank on you not mowing your lawn for a few days..
what is fun is when that contractor never shows up.. and told the cable company he did..
i had a similar issue with my power last year.. one of the 120v legs went bad.. so they slapped a transformer on the side of my house -next day techs came out and identified where the leg was bad.. ripped up part of my neighbors driveway to fix the cable.. told them a contractor would come by in a day or so to poor a new patch slab... two weeks later the neighbor is pissed and the power company says it has beenfixed.. all because a contractor never bothered to do the job and jsut said he did it...
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:4)
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Informative)
nope. spool of string, a soft poofy to tie on then fo string that fits easily in conduit and a wet-dry vac. works great. I suggest pulling a string along with the wire so you can easily re-do it later or add another wire.
BTW: 1500 feet of cat 5 does not work well for ethernet. get a pair of sdsl modems and put one at each end of the wire and you can go for 20 miles.
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:3, Informative)
I have tried this on two seperate occasions. One worked decently (300m)Util humidity changes caused connection and data loss. Both situations dirt cheap used SDLS modems off ebay solved the issue. in fact one we used 4 SDsl modems and bonded them at the switches and got very close to 25mbps over 300meters.
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Informative)
Doing it professionally for $10K (Score:5, Informative)
You may want to pay your neighbor for a utilities easement to either run a cable down his property or install point A for fixed-wireless on his property. Then, pay the cable company as normal for them to connect Point A to their hookup. You will also need to get electrical service. The up-front costs won't be cheap but it will be a lot less than $10K.
If there are several neighbors affected, you may want to form a co-op or contract with a company who will own the easement.
Re:Doing it professionally for $10K (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Funny)
Hoe (one per helper)
The mark of true friendship is helping you lay cable even when you don't hire them prostitutes in return.
Obligatory Ken Jennings Jeopardy clip (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:3, Informative)
1. Make sure you have permission from the land owners to dig the trench and lay the line.
2. Stay away from the state/city/county right of way, or the next time they work on something your line will be torn up.
3. ???
4. Profit
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833130039 [newegg.com]
Two 19 dBi directional outdoor antennas ($82 each)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833980012 [newegg.com]
Various Cabling:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812146013 [newegg.com]
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833164143 [newegg.com]
Two WRT54GL's ($60 each) to be equipped with Linux firmware (recommend DD-WRT)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124190 [newegg.com]
I'm sure there will be all sorts of adapters (M to F and TNC to N-type) needed, so plan on making several batches of purchases before you go to the site. Also disable the unused antenna in DD-WRT.
DIY vdsl/aerial cable (Score:4, Informative)
Then go aerial, affix the cat 3 to a wire (for support) and put a 10 ft pole every 10 meters or so. Aerial is most likely the easiest to install, maintain, and upgrade. It also allows for the running of coax for a future cable tv install that will require additional amplification to reach your fathers house.
The nice thing about running cat 3 is vdsl has a nice upgrade path to 100 mbps and beyond.
Re:DIY vdsl/aerial cable (Score:4, Funny)
For 500 meters? Better have some good lightning protection, or things will get exciting first time a thunderstorm comes along.
Run a string through it as well (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Informative)
Howeverm if you lay multimode-fibre then you can get a length of 2km out of it. I have no idea what kind of routers you'd need to make that work, but I guess they'd be expensive.
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:3, Interesting)
I know you're all about to scream "don't run power in parallel with data", but hear me out. I never said to use 120VAC. Why not run, say, 24VDC down 14AWG cable, with a DC-DC converter alongside each hub?
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:3, Informative)
You need:
1. Power at both ends of the line
2. a ditch with conduit
3. a spool of single-mode
4. a professional with the tools to terminate the ends of the fiber
5. two single mode to ethernet media converters, http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=884092 [cdw.com]
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Are you serious? (Score:5, Interesting)
B = cost of equipment (free because you already have it? Power tool rental?)
C = cost of submitting a request to the county
D = cost of cables, conduits, etc that gets buried.
If A + B + C + D $10,000 that the cable company is quoting, then it's a good deal. If it gets a permit and is all done to code there's nothing the cable company can sue about... especially since he'd just basically extended their infrastructure at no cost to them.
There's always inviting a cell tower to be built on your property. In such a case the cell companies would wind up buring some kind of infrastructure anyway to support it. When that happens, call again and all of a sudden, wouldn't you know it, you've got cabling all up to practically your doorstep.
WildBlue? (Score:3, Informative)
You might have a look at Engenius's outdoor APs [engeniustech.com]. A pair of EOC-3220s should work well. Cheaper than most outdoor gear, supports POE, stable (at least mine has been rock solid, I have the external antenna version). And it support bridging natively!
Cheers,
Re:Consider the do it yourself way... (Score:3, Informative)
A compressor on the other hand that's blowing air has no problem blowing more than an atmosphere pressure. And in a 500m pipe that can make a huge difference.
Proper Antenna (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Proper Antenna (Score:5, Informative)
Ticking along for years. 2 MBPS, faster than T1 speed. And proprietary FHSS, no freeloaders. Heh.
You have to get the antenna up above the fresnel effect and any obstructions at the frequency in use, about 60' for 915 Mhz, more like 30' for 2.4 Ghz. Which is why 2.4 Ghz is easier. I would have no problem running that link at either frequency. It'll work fine.
You can do it. No problems at all.
Give good attention to the antennas, that's what you need to get it to work.
Re:Proper Antenna (Score:4, Informative)
Such antennas are cheap and small. (Score:5, Informative)
Such antennas are cheap and small, too. Under $100 in singles at a number of companies with online ordering facilities.
A 24db skeleton-parabola can get you miles of range even without a high-gain antenna on the other end, and is about the size of a UHF TV antenna. (I know one guy who war-scans the business district of San Francisco with one - from his apartment deck in Berkeley. B-) ) With antennas on both ends you should be able to go with the little lozenge types.
To give you an idea of range: My Nevada house is about 5 miles from the cell tower where the local WiSP has its POP, with a directional antenna pointed generally my way. His customers normally use a lozenge antenna with built in AP mounted on an outside wall, and I'll probably do that when I sign up (because my computer room is on the far side of the house). But my picture window faces the tower and my laptop catches the ID beacon just fine sitting in my lap using the builtin antenna.
So for a half-mile putting an AP in each attic and even a low-gain external antenna on the roof or outside wall should do the job just fine.
Want a cheap do-it-yourself high-gain directional antenna? Get a big wok strainer (woks and their strainers are pretty good parabolas), put a USB-stick WiFI adapter on a USB extension cord, and mount it with its backside at the focus of the strainer. B-)
Re:Proper Antenna (Score:3, Informative)
Did he lose his marbles? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Did he lose his marbles? (Score:5, Funny)
[Ducks]
From Engadget... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:From Engadget... (Score:5, Informative)
Doable with 802.11g (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Doable with 802.11g (Score:3, Funny)
Legislation? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Legislation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where I live, if you don't live in town, you pay the electric company to plant poles to deliver the power. You pay the well digger to dig you a well. And you pay the telephone company to string some line along those electric co. poles. If you don't like the above, you sit in the dark and use an outhouse.
You can use wireless (Score:5, Informative)
Directional High-Gain Antenna (Score:2, Informative)
Linksys (I don't know about others) come with a standard antenna port. With a directional, high-gain antenna pointed at your dad's house from the neighbor's, you could probably make the connection. Worst case, you might need to get some custom firmware and turn up the transmission strength a tad. (I suggest Tomato.)
Look up "coffee can wifi antennas" on google. This will make it cheap and "easy."
Re:Directional High-Gain Antenna (Score:5, Informative)
Careful. Not ALL Linksys have antenna ports. Some do, some don't. I just bought one that doesn't. Not a concern for me, but don't buy one online without looking closely expecting them to have ports.
Re:Directional High-Gain Antenna (Score:3, Interesting)
Just as an aside, the famous Rob Flickenger "Pringles Tube" antenna with all the washers up the inside sucks elephants through very fine gauze.
The stopped waveguide "coffee can" antennas work much better, but finding a suitable 85mm diameter can might be tricky. There are a lot of simple patch antenna designs out there, too. Helicals are too much hassle, really.
You might get good results with a couple of USB wifi sticks mounted in place of the LNB of some old satellite dishes.
Cantenna? (Score:5, Informative)
They're really cheap to build. You generally need to find reverse-polarity RF connectors to hook to the card in the computer. Digikey.com, newark.com, and mouser.com all sell reverse-polarity rf connectors. Traditionally people put n-type rf connectors on the antenna but that's a pain: I built mine using a bnc bulkhead connector on the can, and a rp-sma-to-bnc converter connector on my wireless adapter card, and just ran bnc cable from one to the other.
Mine only runs 40 meters through a couple of walls. Hopefully other people will correct this if it's the wrong solution for 500 meters.
Re:Cantenna? (Score:3, Funny)
2. It was my understanding that modifying the antenna on an FCC-licensed device was illegal. I may be wrong.
Re:Metric shibboleth (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Metric shibboleth (Score:3, Interesting)
Hawking external antennas (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.hawkingtech.com/products/productlist.php?CatID=32&FamID=58&ProdID=133 [hawkingtech.com]
ALL wireless routers go that far. (Score:5, Informative)
Wireless access point at each end, directional antennas, wifi goodness ensues.
I've done 1000 meters with simple patch antennas and wrt54g routers running dd-wrt to create a wireless ethernet extension. Only heavy rain will drop the connection.
Otherwise look up the laser types. there are hundreds of websites on how to do this simple and common task.
$318 WiFi network bridge connects two locations up (Score:5, Informative)
There is an article at engadget [engadget.com] about this sort of thing. It requires line-of-site, but I'm sure you could manage that.
Link to the Article [businesswire.com]
Hope this helps.
Use Mikrotik boards, which run Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
I recommend using Ubiquity sR2 or SR5 mini-pci cards...and ground everything especially well.
Mikrotik boards run Linux and are extremely roboust and feature rich. But you can follow this wiki and have a transparent bridge running in no time flat:
http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Transparently_Bridge_two_Networks [mikrotik.com]
We use mikrotik a lot in a wireless WISP situation. If someone thinks they are going to throw a bunch of this stuff hundreds of feet in the air and make a lot of money doing wireless Internet, they are in for a wild ride...that ends somewhere between hairloss and a straight jacket...but I do something almost exactly like what you are wanting to do with your father using Mikrotik, and it has worked very well and wasn't super expensive.
Again, ground everything as best you can, and use directional, not omni antennas (cheap omni antennas often have grounding issues than can pop the radio card really easy).
See also: wisp-router.com
Transporter_ii
SMC 2891W (Score:3, Informative)
SMC2891W-AG Wireless Outdoor Bridge
Data Sheet [smc.com]
Manual [smc.com]
Novaroam stuff works well (900Mhz no license band) (Score:4, Interesting)
-Karl
A rock record: http://www.instarmusic.com/ [instarmusic.com]
It would be nice.. (Score:3, Informative)
After you figure that out go to http://www.hyperlinktech.com/familylist.aspx?id=146 [hyperlinktech.com] or where ever you want to get an Antenna.
my guess is your going to want to grab the 24db one seeing as how the 30 jumps quite a bit in price. after that mount them both with line of sight connect everything up and you should be good to go. If you don't have line of sight then its going to depend on whats in the way if its possible at all.
Make your own antenna (Score:3, Interesting)
Wireless (Score:4, Interesting)
Now granted this was the old school way of doing it. The other problem was that I was using 75 feet of LMR-400 cable on each end to bring the signal from the antenna to my card. That's generally not a good idea since long runs of cable attenuate the signal, so it's always best to have your network equipment as close to the antenna as possible. But back then that type of stuff was hella expensive - Just between the grid antennas, the cards, the dongles, and the cables it came out to about $600. You don't even want to know what the network equipment would have cost, which is why I ran it on the cheap using Linux.
But now this stuff practically grows on trees. There are kits around that let you do long distance point-to-point hookups, but I don't know where to get them off the top of my head since I haven't researched it in awhile. You might want to start with Radio Labs [radiolabs.com] to get an idea of the type of equipment that's out there. Bottom line is that if I can get a decent wifi signal from four miles away with a non-optimal configuration, you should be able to do 500m as long as you have line of sight. I think you should be able to get away with it for around $500 or less.
Go Optical ? (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Clear line of sight.
2) A soldering iron (and know how to use it *properly*)
3) Basic metalwork skills.
4) Spare time **LOTS**
http://ronja.twibright.com/ [twibright.com]
"Ronja is a free technology project for reliable optical data links with a current range of 1.4km and a communication speed of 10Mbps full duplex."
10 Megabit free space optical complete with designs & pcb layouts.
Can't get more DIY than this
this may work... (Score:4, Insightful)
Linksys WRT54GLx2 + 2 14dBi directional antenna (Score:4, Interesting)
This wouldn't be on Cape Cod now would it? (Score:5, Funny)
RONJA (Score:3, Interesting)
500m is nothing... what matters is line-of-sight (Score:3, Informative)
If you do not have line of sight from the ground, try the roof. If you still don't your next option would be to build a mast. You can make a mast up to 10 or 12m cheaply by telescoping several pieces of steel pipe and bracing the whole thing with 3 steel cables. I have a 9m mast like this that I built for about $100.
Make sure to get a router with antennas that you can disconnect and replace (not all have those, but many do). Then connect a directional antenna... for 500m you don't need anything fancy, the cheapest directional antenna you can buy or a home-made "cantenna" will do just fine.
Same for the other end of the connection... if you don't want to put a router on both ends, make sure your wifi card has an antenna connector. Or you can use a USB wifi adapter with a "stub" antenna, and stick that little stub directly into a "cantenna" type can (you'll need to calculate the position of the hole for the antenna... there are calculators for this on the net, google "cantenna calculator"). That will turn a little $25 USB dongle into a directional Wifi powerhouse, using nothing but a can with hole drilled in the right place! I've gotten a strong connection over 1km between two of those and I'm sure it could have gone much further but we didn't try because 1km was enough.
For your short distance of 500m, given line of sight, you may even be able to get away with a directional antenna only on one end, and the regular omni antenna on the other. I.e. if you have window-to-window sight, you may be able to put an unmodified router on the windowsill of one house and a usb-dongle-cantenna on a windowsill of the other and have your link.
Good luck!
Use DSL (Score:3, Informative)
Here's the kind of boxes I'm talking about:
http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190224334652 [cgi.ebay.ca]
Re:Get a long cord (Score:2)
Re:Get a long cord (Score:3, Informative)
Omni antenna question (Score:3, Informative)
My question: would tipping the angle of the antenna towards the reception area improve the take-off angle enough to make a difference? No-one has given me a straight answer on this.
Anyway, I was surprised at how well this !cheap! system works when they asked me to check it out. It just needs some minor reception adjustments.
Re:Options (Score:3, Interesting)