Point to Point wireless 1.2m

ai ing

So what I want to do is connect a building that can get dsl to a house 1.2 miles away with clear line of sight between them. The house does not have a phone line (at least another 3 months says eircom) and no wireless options available.
I am looking at setting up a point to point wireless link between the two buildings using directional antennae. Does anybody know where in Ireland or the UK I can get the gear I need. I have seen some stuff on ebay but my problem is I am not sure what else I need other than the antennae. I know I need something to go from the antennae to ethernet but can I use just a standard wireless router or is their other gear available that would be better for this?

irlrobins

ai ing wrote:

can I use just a standard wireless router

Lol, you'd be doing well to get a standard router to go .2 of a mile never mind 1.2. You're def looking at some hitech (and expensive) equipment.

Some people say you can make antenna/receivers with pringle/tin cans but I'm a bit doubtful of those claims.

generalmiaow

It can be done with semi-regular hardware, especially neat solutions have involved flashing off the shelf routers to OpenWRT and setting up an ad-hoc over the distance. You have need to have line of sight. As irlrobins said there's rare people getting distances like that in experiments and more with cantennas, but you'll need an extremely good knowledge of antennae to build your own parabolic antennae, but you can of course buy more suited antennae. There's a certain amount of interest in doing this in Ireland, I think there's even a website, but I can't find it again.

generalmiaow

found the site. it's http://www.irishwan.org/. unfortunately it seems to be down at the minute

(edit: It isn't down, it's available at http://www.irishwan.ie/ )

ai ing

Thanks generalmiaow, I had forgotten all about irishwan. I have a couple of WRT54GL's here running DD-WRT but I wasnt sure if they were up to the job or not. I will have a look around irishwan for more info. Definitley not looking to build my own antennae gonna, buy off the shelf. I have seen some fairly decent looking directional ones on ebay for aroung 40-60 euro

bushy...

A pair of 24 SD24 from http://www.wi-pipe.com/2.4GHz.htm will work fine , will be on your doorstep in a day or two , well tried n tested in real life.
Your WRTs should work ok , but stay away from stuff off ebay unless you are sure its a known brand/has worked for someone else, cos there is mountains of rubbish for sale for outdoor wireless ....... no doubt something will crawl out from under a rock and post a " Buy one of xxxx from yyy, who has no connection to me at all , they are teh l33tness" message

mayhem#

1.2 milies with a pair of off the shelf AP's combined with pigtails and directional antennas should be no problem.
You might ask the IrishWAN lads but they tend to get you to build your own gear which in most cases is overkill...

E.