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 ....

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?

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 ;(

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.

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

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!

an even better solutin than Pringles

I just found plans for a coffee can antenna that gives a 16db boost. It's much easier to build than the pringles antenna and smaller overall. Like the article states...a commercial antenna in this range is around $100! http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/1124

Here is another related link:
http://www.turnpoint.net/wireless/cantennahowto.html

I just wish I had someone to try this with!