What do I need to broadcast an outdoor WiFi network?
House 1 (H1) has ADSL. Would like to broadcast a wireless signal over about 500-800 feet to reach another house (H2). Do I need one wireless router at H1 with a range extender antenna, and a repeater (router setup as repeater)in H2 with another range extender antenna? There are no obstacles between both houses, flat land. Would this setup work?
3 Responses
NumberSix6
12 Feb 2010
acklan
12 Feb 2010
Setup a Cantenna on each end and your set. I am able to reach 1100′ from line of site. I relay from my router to my father’s wifi access point which rebroadcasts to his computer.
Cantenna type antennas have about 4°spread making them highly directional and harder to intercept.
Tracy L
12 Feb 2010
Well you can go the ol do it yourself repeater system or you can just get a couple of good high power bridges to do it all!.
Go to http://echotechwireless.com or http://defactowireless.com
They both sell more commercial grade gear but at reasonable prices.
You can get two Zinwell radios (which have about 10 times the power of your normal linksys, dlink. etc) and two directional antennas.. thats all you need. One on each end. In home 2 if you want to redistribute just run another router.
These were designed for this pupose and work great. We use them for 8-10Miles and they do just fine.
Units are affordable and deliver full throughput without the loss you will see with repeaters etc.
You can also get just external antennas if you want to try the cheaper route, those will probably work at 800 feet but will not be as consistant.
In short, yes, it will work. Just remember,the downside of wireless repeaters is that they reduce throughput on the WLAN. A repeater must receive and retransmit each frame on the same RF channel, which effectively doubles the number of frames that are sent. This problem compounds when using multiple repeaters because each repeater will duplicate the number of frames sent. Thus, be sure to plan the use of repeaters sparingly.
The configuration of a repeater is relatively straight forward. After switching the access point to repeater mode, you set the service set identifier (SSID) of the repeater to match the SSID of the specific (root) access points that the repeater will associate with. Most repeaters will, similar to wireless network cards, automatically associate with the access point with the strongest signal. However, you can designate specific MAC addresses of the preferred and secondary access points as an option. If the repeater cannot connect with the preferred access point, it will try to associate with the next one, and so on.
All in all, wireless repeaters are an excellent way to increase the radio range of an existing WLAN, especially if it’s not practical to install an additional access point to fully cover the location. Just don’t get carried away with installing too many repeaters to keep performance up.