Wireless? pleaase help

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Shnig

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Hi me and my friend are trying to go about networking our p.c's. We live about 3 or 4 deatached houses away from each other(about 50 meters) and we are wondering what would be the best way to network our pcs ( we'v been dreaming for years but now weve got the money). Would Wireless be the best way to go about it??
All suggestions more then welcome
 
Well wireless is about the only option you have unless your neighbors are going to let you bury cables through their yards:p ....
 
One thing to be careful about is IF you do set up the wireless network, you need to make sure it is secure, or any of your neighbors would be able to steal your internet....

I think you would also need quite a big amplifier to get the signals between the 2 houses. A regular wireless hub woudn't be able to spread that far I don't think.
 
If you guys are both on broadband I would suggest a VPN. You won't get the greatest speed that way though, but at least you can share all your resources.

LNCPapa
 
Wow...do wireless really have that kind of range of 50m, i mean what about other factors icnluding window glass, brick walls etc.? Wouldn't it like weaken the signal?
 
No - You won't get 50m connections over wireless. I was suggesting the VPN through the ISP. Sorry for any confusion. Unless you can find someone to put a repeater in one of the houses between you I don't think you will be able to do it that way. I can get access to my wireless from my neighbor's house, but that's about as far as it goes for me.

LNCPapa
 
Well thats what i was thinking too but i was looking at wireless net-cards at amazon.com(ill try and find the name of it tonight) and I came acrosss one that said max range 400m or something like that but it never mentioned anything about outdoors oh and btw we live in Ireland so broadband is out of the q's ;(
 
Well I know you can get wireless cards to pick up signals from a distance, but the hardest part is getting the router or whatever to spread the signal that far. It has to be amplified multiple times to get to those distances. Just something to think about.
 
Distance of signal travel is all about line of sight when you're dealing with high frequency wireless transmitions. Houses and trees can all block trasmitions. maybe some kind of roof mounted dish system would work.
 
This stuff about wireless networks sounds nice, but I think that it will involve planning permission, the co-operation of ALL neighbors, and A LOT OF MONEY.

The VPN (as suggested by Papa) is one good option. Its then as if you are both on a LAN connected by an additional virtual network adapter. The speed will not be as good as if they were connected by a physical cable, etc, but its a start. Here you both dial up your ISPs and then use the internet to make a "virtual" network connection to each other.

That's if you want internet access as well. If you just purely want to be connected to each other, then you can set up one machine as a dial-up server, and call into it from the other machine. This uses the same sort of technology that allows you to call your ISP over a phone line. Instead of connecting to the internet with your 2 modems, you connect to each other. Even Windows 98 does this as far as I remember. This option will have the best performance I imagine.

There's nothing to prevent you having a cable between your PC and your friends, but you will have to dig up the neighbor's gardens and the next time a dog chewed on it, you would be back to square one.

Now, if you were one of the neighbours, would you let some kids dig up your gardens to plant some cable? Get real. If you get something "physical" to work please post with an article on how you did it, but I can't see it.

But there are other alternatives to wireless or cabling, VPN and direct dial-up being two strong ones. Post back if you are interested in any of these options.
 
When my parents had one of those big satellites, the ones before the cool little dish ones, and the cable was just lying on the ground, my dad and I decided that probably wasn't the best place for it considering the lawnmowers and such. So we buried it about 6 inches into the soil, well maybe not quite that deep but close. If its feasable to go on like the last few feet of their yard the I'd imagine you can dig without makign it unsightly, recommend using a spade or something and just step it into the ground then push it foward tuck the cable down and then put the dirt back, shoulnd't cause much disturbance at all. Although it would take a while to go 50 meters.
But that leads me to a question, could you even go that far with cat-5? Could you with coax?

But he says 3-4 houses away, by him not knowing for sure that leads me to think maybe across the street or something, in that case I don't think you'll be having much luck digging up the roadway :).

You guys sure wireless wont' go that far? 802.11b or 802.11g can't do it? I heard from a little birdy that the things that disagree with wireless are for the most part limited to dual ply cinder block walls, glazed brick, wet anything, chain link fences, and 2.4Ghz cordless phones. But I haven't looked it up to verify any of that.
 
You guys sure wireless wont' go that far? 802.11b or 802.11g can't do it? I heard from a little birdy that the things that disagree with wireless are for the most part limited to dual ply cinder block walls, glazed brick, wet anything, chain link fences, and 2.4Ghz cordless phones. But I haven't looked it up to verify any of that.


Wirless is affected by everthing you say here. Conrad is right though. You need line of sight I dont care what you are going through. A big tree will knock a wireless signal down. Cat 5 will run 110 meters I think. Close to that anyway. Might do some midnight digging. And I dont know about dialing into 98 but I know you can with win2k or XP.


S>
 
Cat5 signal remains strong up to 300 feet, or around 100M, depending on the quality of the cable involved. I know I have used 100 foot cords before no problem.
 
You can run CAT5, and even use some sort of repeating device to boost the signal when it starts to die, then connecting another 100M cable, etc, etc....

But the point is..... THEY WILL HAVE TO DIG UP THEIR NEIGHBOUR'S GARDENS....!!!!

I can't see any sane neighbour agreeing to that. Their reply will contains the letters F, F, F, U, O, C, K, but not neccessarily in that particular order....

Face it, the best thing you can do in a residential area where you live some houses apart is join together either over the internet(VPN), or through dialing each other up over the phone network.

However, if you DO manage to get this to happen, please let us all know because I will be very impressed. I'd be only to glad to have a read like that if you did.
 
Here I'm sorry bout this i dont really have time to get exact link but take a look at this and see what u think :go to www.amazon.com and search for this :Linksys WMP11 802.11b Wireless PCI Adapter

Tell me if ye think this will work as ye seem to know what ye are talkin about
 
Amazon.com Results: we were unable to find exact matches for your search for Linksys WMP11 802.11b Wireless PCI Adapter .
Would you like to search again?

It appears amazon doen'st know that exact adapter.
 
Yes, 802.11b wireless at 2.4Ghz is line of sight. The typical limits that I've seen with an dish-type uni-directional antenna at each location is anywhere from 5-10 miles! It's 100% dependant on line of site and signal loss over distance. It's illegal in most cases to amplify the signal but NOT illegal to guide the signal with a directional antenna. Here is an example of a guy who used two modified PrimeStar dishes: http://www.wwc.edu/~frohro/Airport/Primestar/Primestar.html

You can also find plans for Pringles Can antennas along with commercially available antennas here:
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Wi-Fi_20Extender

I'm thinking that you could get by with a low gain solution like the Pringles cans since you're only going 3-4 houses away. The Pringles cans would be relatively easy to hide as well. You need to make sure that the wireless access point/wireless NIC that you purchase have a jack for an external antenna. Mostly likely you'll want a wireless access point at either end or a wireless access point on one end with a wireless NIC at the other. You can create a secure wireless access point using a wireless NIC plugged into a Linux box; this would take quite a bit a technical expertise to accomplish though.

Linksys and other manufacturers make wireless access points with VPNs built-in. I don't know if you can VPN over the wireless connection but that is something to look into for security. Typically these VPN/Firewall/Router combos are used over the Internet with a VPN box at each location. Good Luck!
 
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