Question for all you'se Computer Techies

[mxATVracer10]

Would it be possible for me to piggyback/steal teh broadband innerwebs from my parents house that is located roughly a football field away uphill? We live in the country so interfering with someone else shouldn't be a prob and security shouldn't be that big of an issue either. Over the weekend I purchased a Netgear RangeMax Wireless-N router and desktop card in hopes of that doing the trick. Unfortunately, it did not. Any suggestions on what I could do to get it working? Like I said its roughly 300-350 feet and downhill from the access point, and there is only two or three trees interfering with line-of-sight. Thanks in advance for any advice :cool:

[GottaHavePride]

I think if you want to go that route you're going to have to run some cable to get a wireless access point much closer to you. and if you're running cable anyway, you might as well run it all the way to your house. and if you're spending enough money to run Cat 5 (or Cat 6) 350 feet, you might as well just pay for your own connection.

[sooner_born_1960]

300 -350 feet of CAT5 would do the trick.

[sooner_born_1960]

Only about $100.

[Vaevictis]

It might also be possible to use directional antennas, if you prefer the wireless route.

Apparently, pringles cans can be rigged to work for this kind of thing. Supposedly, a well built one can result in a 12db gain which is pretty good.

Can you get a direct LOS by moving the antenna around? That would help a lot. Scatter from the trees will mess up the signal a lot. (As in, scatter from the trees, if it's bad enough, can mess up the signal so that it's irrecoverable, even if the signal is strong.)

http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/448

[mxATVracer10]

I've been really looking into the pringles can thing. My concern there is how do they connect to everything? And would I still benefit from this higher dollar N band stuff if I were to go with a two cantenna setup?

Wouldn't the wired route lose too much in the length and end up being as slow or possibly slower than dial up?

[yermom]

i've heard of people using like DirecTV dishes and stuff

there are lots of people doing junk like this

[sooner_born_1960]

I've been really looking into the pringles can thing. My concern there is how do they connect to everything? And would I still benefit from this higher dollar N band stuff if I were to go with a two cantenna setup?

Wouldn't the wired route lose too much in the length and end up being as slow or possibly slower than dial up?
Not as much as the wireless route does. ;)

[PeoriaSooner]

http://www.cantenna.com

[OzarkSooner]

Line of sight is probably THE second most important variable with home-type wireless networks. Even though they are omnidirectional by nature, you can make them directional by various methods. Strength of signal or power is the most important variable. If you have enough power, the distance isn't a problem, if you don't have line of sight...almost any distance will kill or diminish your signal(Walls in your house for example). I would see if there's a way to put the antenna you bought in an upper room or even on the roof so that you can gain true line of sight. Other than that, just experiment and see wha' happens!

[soonerboomer93]

you only need LOS with a directional antenna, and there are companies that sell direction antennas that can be connected to wireless. I used one many years ago in BFE but I can't remember who we got it from...

[Vaevictis]

Actually, I'm going to disagree with your statement that LOS is the second most important variable.

Received power drops as an inverse exponent; 1/d^c, roughly. With LOS, c tends to stay low. Intervening objects will increase c considerably, and will add stuff like scatter and reflections, which can add inter-symbol interference. ISI is bad, bad news. At best, it will negatively effect your data rate. At worst, it will cause transmission errors.

LOS is important and highly beneficial, no matter what kind of antenna you use.

[slickdawg]

Wired is the way to go, and 100 metres is the limit for a run of cat 5.
So if you are 330 feet or less, then you are cool.

[OKC-SLC]

I had very bad luck with a Netgear router.

Just sayin.

[Vaevictis]

Wouldn't the wired route lose too much in the length and end up being as slow or possibly slower than dial up?

100 meters is the maximum cable run for 100BaseT on Cat5.

This has to do with timing mechanisms -- an ethernet device is only required to hold a frame ready for retransmission for a certain amount of time. After your cable gets past 100 meters, the time it takes for the signal to traverse the cable and for an transmission error to get detected can exceed the hold time.

At that point, the transmitting device has discarded the frame, and won't be able to retransmit it. If the upper level protocol supports retransmission, it'll eventually retransmit. If not, the frame is just gone.

And yeah, this can slow things down a lot if you're having transmission errors. If you're not, I think you won't notice a thing, assuming your link is full duplex.

You can address this by using a store-and-forward device like a switch somewhere along the path so that no one leg of the path is >100 meters.

[mxATVracer10]

assuming the rain quits by the time I get home today, I'm going to find some sort of measuring device to get some actual footage on this today and see if the wired route will work. I will post the results whenever I get them...

[mxATVracer10]

alright guys, I was finally able to get a decent measurement of the distance. In my best hillbilly form, using a 100ft. reel type tape measurer and a large nail to hold it in place, I came up with right at 360ft. from the front of my house and the front corner of the host house. I walked what looked to be the easiest path to clear line-of-sight, with just a few limbs that will need to be trimmed. So I guess the wired route is out of the question.....

[Vaevictis]

Wired isn't completely out of the question, it's just a matter of deciding how you want to do it.

For example, it could be feasible to use power over ethernet (POE) to provide power to a switch you put halfway through the run.

[mxATVracer10]

I think I'm going to take the stuff I have now back and look into something that has external antennas so I can work with it more. Everything I have been reading online has pointed to external antennas or parabolic reflectors and Netgear conveniently enclosed everything into the factory casing, therefore voiding warranty if tampered with. :mad: I'll repost when I get the new equipment and see if I can get something working better then. Thanks for the help thus far everyone! :texan: