Medium distance wifi boost advice

I want to throw wifi to a house that is roughly 100 yards away from a Linksys router. Using upgraded omni-directional antennas (non powered), a typical laptop barely sees a signal at the secondary house and drops the connection easily. I want to add a wireless bridge/AP to the receiving house that will catch a directional antenna set up at the primary house. The signal will cross a field that sometimes has corn growing. Line of sight should be right over the tops of the corn, but it could be obscured slightly during certain times of the year.

Right now I am thinking that I can use the Linksys router I already have, add a WAP, and equip both with homemade cantennas. Another option I thought about doing was using 2 Hawking out door directional antennas to communicate, but that will push the budget over 200 dollars.

Any suggestions on the gear like the WAP and antennas or even advice on a better way to set it up?

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Originally Posted by Timman_24

I want to throw wifi to a house that is roughly 100 yards away from a Linksys router. Using upgraded omni-directional antennas (non powered), a typical laptop barely sees a signal at the secondary house and drops the connection easily. I want to add a wireless bridge/AP to the receiving house that will catch a directional antenna set up at the primary house. The signal will cross a field that sometimes has corn growing. Line of sight should be right over the tops of the corn, but it could be obscured slightly during certain times of the year.

Right now I am thinking that I can use the Linksys router I already have, add a WAP, and equip both with homemade cantennas. Another option I thought about doing was using 2 Hawking out door directional antennas to communicate, but that will push the budget over 200 dollars.

Any suggestions on the gear like the WAP and antennas or even advice on a better way to set it up?

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Homemade can antennas or a decent 14dB Yagi antenna should do it. At my first tech job (around the time I joined Sharky's) at the local ISP, we had a T1 going to the office. Owner of the place had a nice place nestled against the mountain 1/2 mile away. We used two 14dB yagi antennas on some poles outside each location, and he was able to use the full bandwidth of the T1. Keep in mind this was at the time of 802.11b, there was probably zero interference, etc.

*Edit: To get it to work we simply used two wireless bridges with adapters to connect to the N-type connector on the outdoor antennas. No power boost needed. Although, we did need time (a few hours) to align the antennas properly.

*Edit2: I think we used something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Browning-2-4-G.../dp/B003YL5WJG

Is there a road separating these houses?

An idea, is if you can dig a trench/clip cables around houses, you could run a length of cat cable from your AP, to another one. Cheapest solution, if it is possible.

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Originally Posted by wh666-666

Is there a road separating these houses?

An idea, is if you can dig a trench/clip cables around houses, you could run a length of cat cable from your AP, to another one. Cheapest solution, if it is possible.

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There is about 200ft+ of field that is leased as farm land that separates the two houses, plus two gravel driveways. I think it would be much more expensive to bury a wire. If it was a barn/studio that was close to the house, then I would do that over a weekend.

I think I will buy another Linksys router that has WAP capabilities and use two outdoor directional antennas.

Update for you guys. I got it all set up. I ran into some trouble that ended up being a bum antenna outlet on one of my routers, which took a night to finally figure out.

My gear I used was:
Main Access Point- WRT54GL V1.1 with DD-WRT
Client Bridge- WRT54GS V7 with DD-WRT
Antennas- 2x TrendNet 14db gain outdoor directional
Cable- 1ft Low Loss N-Male cable

Ping is only 54ms using speedtest.net connecting to the internet at the client. The span is roughly 120 yards and my signal is RSSI -42 at AP and -52 at client with noise at -92 at both.

Pretty impressive for 190 dollars worth of gear. I now get to cancel DSL at the office so the cost will be recouped within 4 months.

Now I just have to finish the openings that I drilled and start running Cat6.