Setting up a Wide Area Network, Equipment?

-Colli$ion-

-Colli$ion-

-Colli$ion-

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27 Jun 2003
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526
Location
UK
hi :)

I m interested in setting up a wireless network with a few of my mates that live down the road. There are 3 different houses living roughly about a mile apart from each other, just wondering if its possible to make a wireless network between us and what sort of equipment would we need?.

We dont quite have a line-of-sight, but there arnt many buildings in the way.

At a quick glance:

1 High Gain Antenna x3
1 decent router/switch x3

Have I got the right idea ?

Budget of £300 per house, so £900 for all equipment!

Any thoughts greatly appreciated.
 
1 mile, be supprised if you can do this without serious kit. What is the purpose of the network, to share a single internet connection? To run high bandwidth / low latency applications between your LANs?

If you already have internet connections, I'd recommend just nailing up a secure VPN.

SKidd.
 
you would need a parabolic dish (like a Sky TV dish) for this. I cant give links to sites as they would be competitors but searching for something like wlan and parabolic on google should help your search.

The kit gets expensive, and god knows it cant be healthy if your sat near it whilst its transmitting!
 
the problem with the directional antennas is that we are going to need LOS (Line of Sight) witch we do not have.

if al 3 of us have these high gain Omni directional 15dBi antennas, sure we would be able to pick eachother up? as long as the inteferance is not to great.

if not how would we go about boosting the signal output so it is posable to conect to each other?

iv seen somthing about an amp any1 seen them or got any idears?

thanks steve
 
Your going to pretty much need line of sight any how, its nothing to do with the aerial you use. A mile is quite a distance in wlan terms and any obstructions in the way will have a adverse affect.

Its either sending the signal in all directions or a more focused direction. Each 3db gain is like a doubling of your transmitting power, so you can make do with a poorer aerial but will need more power. There are amplifiers available, but you will add to the possibilites of you interfering with other devices as well as a your omni picking up more interferance. Not to mention the fact that the more people that can see your connection the more likely it is someone will break in to it.

Before you spend out why not get up on one of your roofs and have a look, try and see what may be in the way, you wont get away with very much.

Theres a whole load of info out there, id say a project like this needs some research.

TDF.
 
IMHO - Setup some VPN tunnels over your current broadband connections. You WiFi network will be very expensive for what you'll end up getting. I wouldn't want you to spend out hundreds of pounds and hours of setup time - only to get a weak and slow connection...

VPN tunneling can be fully encrypted and secure. This will still allow you to conenct all three of your houses together into one network, but instead you get the advanatage of the full speed of Broadband and the ISPs can look after all the hassle of the cables. :)

There are free VPN products around and it will make more sense to spend that "£300 per house" on a shared file server and large beer fridge.

Actually spending some cash on a remote controlled beer delivery system which used GPS to pass beers from house to house seems an incredibly sensible idea to me..... :D
 
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