(Help) 200ft Wireless Bridge or is there another way?

[JzL]

Needs -
Wifi Access to a workshop ~200ft away from the main house wifi connection. Nothing wired in the workshop. All I need is a DEPENDABLE wireless (N) signal for iDevices. The main house will need good signal as well, but I do have an existing linksys router running dd-wrt that can act as an AP if needed in there.

Suppose you were setting this up and was in the planning phase, what hardware would you look in to purchasing? Would you buy a router (DD-WRT capable) and antennas? Omni or Directional? 2 Routers and setup a bridge w/ seperate SSIDs?

$200 total budget for all the needed hardware, can it be done?

 

[LucJoe]

Sounds like you want a directional antenna, possibly a DIY solution?

http://www.turnpoint.net/wireless/cantennahowto.html

 

[JackMDS]

If you have clean line of sight and you use High gain directional Antennae, you can bridge two DD-WRT APs sittng in Windows (or similar opening) looking eye to eye.

It should work but you would know the amount of functional bandwidth until you try.

http://www.ezlan.net/bridging.html

Setting like SSIDs etc., is a matter of choice provided that the signal is going through functional strong.

 

[JzL]

Thanks for the replies.

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/2-4ghz-...work-sma-34759

Would two of these work? One for each router... what routers/APs would you recommend?

 

[drebo]

Some Ubiquiti powerbridges or nanobridges would work.

 

[JzL]

Some Ubiquiti powerbridges or nanobridges would work.

Hi, do you that they (powerbridges) would penetrate walls in that 200ft?

 

[gsaldivar]

I've used Trendnet (12dbi) flat-panel directional antennas to go through walls before. It's quite possible to get a low strength but stable signal.

 

[skyking]

With clear line of sight, window to window will work without any fancy routers as Jack as pointed out. Put one bush or tree in the line and all bets are off.

 

[JackMDS]

Hi, do you that they (powerbridges) would penetrate walls in that 200ft?

Yeah it will work OK if the walls are Japanese rice paper wall.

Otherwise, No chance that it worked on a real functional level.

The max. I ever got with one wall out, and one wall in (i.e two walls) is 70 feet.

 

[Eug]

Are your house and workshop on the same electrical breaker box (or two breaker boxes sharing the same supply)? If so, it may be possible to use powerline networking.

Powerline networking in my setup - house to gazebo 200 feet away - is quite stable, but it's less than 10 BaseT type speeds for that particular location. It's fine for surfing and simple file transfers, but it's useless for HD streaming.

--

BTW, I've never tried those directional antennas, just those larger omnidirectional antennas. From 200 feet through one window and no walls, but with a couple of trees in between, I got exactly 0 signal. It'd be interesting to try two directional antennas, but I wouldn't be optimistic because of those trees.

 

[JzL]

With clear line of sight, window to window will work without any fancy routers as Jack as pointed out. Put one bush or tree in the line and all bets are off.

There are trees, unfortunately.

 

[JzL]

Are your house and workshop on the same electrical breaker box (or two breaker boxes sharing the same supply)? If so, it may be possible to use powerline networking.

Powerline networking in my setup - house to gazebo 200 feet away - is quite stable, but it's less than 10 BaseT type speeds for that particular location. It's fine for surfing and simple file transfers, but it's useless for HD streaming.

--

BTW, I've never tried those directional antennas, just those larger omnidirectional antennas. From 200 feet through one window and no walls, but with a couple of trees in between, I got exactly 0 signal. It'd be interesting to try two directional antennas, but I wouldn't be optimistic because of those trees.

Hmm, this has me wondering. Ill find out if it is on the same breaker box.

 

[drebo]

Hi, do you that they (powerbridges) would penetrate walls in that 200ft?

It's possible, though they are meant to be used outdoors with line-of-sight.

They're very powerful and I've been impressed with how well they work.

I have one 5.8ghz PowerBridge going 10 miles and I get 10mbit full duplex out of it. Not bad for $250 units.

 

[Modelworks]

If you have line of sight , including the fresnel zone then any retail device that can be equipped with an antenna will work. Every wifi radio sold puts out enough power for 200ft with line of sight. The problem is most people think of line of sight as one antenna seeing the other but that is only part of it, you have to have room for the fresnel zone that is several inches to feet around the permiter of the antennas and the path between. An example is having a tree in the path that doesn't block the view from antenna to antenna but is close enough to be in the signals fresnel zone will cut the signal strength all the same. You see this a lot with satellite dish installations where a tree isn't blocking the satellite transponder but is close enough that it blocks the propagation of the signal.

My advice is do a quick site survey. Put an AP or wireless router outiside on top of a ladder about 6 ft off the ground and walk the distance with a laptop to find out how far you can go and if theew is any interference from buried lines, trees, etc. If you can get 100 ft with just the retail setup then adding directional antennas will get you the rest of the distance.

One trick you can use to get around a single tree or obstacle is to bounce the signal off of something else. It is a pain to set up but involves using a metal panel angled correctly so that the signal bounces off it like a mirror around the tree and to the other antenna. I have even seen this done in large installations involving very high data rates. One was to get around a rock face on a mountain that was just a bit too far into the signal path. The reflector was mounted to a post drilled and cemented into the rock face.

 

[Emulex]

WZR-HP-G300NH (DD-WRT) - 20HZ channel 6 - 830mw
http://www.buffalotech.com/products/wireless/wireless-accessories/ <-- cantenna or diy

you can crank it up to 30db (1000mw)

 

[boomerang]

I did this with two N routers about 3 years ago for a friend. The system is still working great and he has had zero problems with it. I have to say, that I myself am amazed.

The router connected to the modem is in the upper level of the house next to a window, which just happened to be where he wanted it anyway. The house is skewed a bit to the shop and the shop can clearly be seen from that window. The other router is at the front of the shop, inside, adjacent to the front wall, high up on a shelf. The shop had been added on to in the past at the front. The new front half is all wood siding on posts. The rear half of the shop is behind an existing metal clad wall that used to be the front and is now covered over with wood. I hardwired from the shop router to the computer in the office in the back of the shop. The whole shop has wireless as does the house.

He races cars and has ginormous stacked car haulers that are parked between the house and shop. Enormous rectangles of aluminum. The line of site is clear, but I was still afraid of the car haulers especially in light of the fact that they get moved around and are not always in the same position.

Two Netgear N routers. I kid you not - it has never given him a lick of trouble in all these years. I have never had to log into either router for anything. No special antennas or anything like that at all. No trips over there for anything related to the setup.

Slightly longer distance than the OP is asking about. Factory firmware.

The rest after this is just for the sake of interest. I had a hell of a time at first getting the routers to talk to each other. I had them set up in the kitchen with an internet connection. When first logging into the config settings, they were set up by default to update the firmware. Router 1, which would be in the home, updated. I then spent hours and hours trying to bridge them with no luck. Finally, I realized it had to be the different firmware on each and connected Router 2 directly to the internet and let it update to the same firmware that Router 1 had. They instantly established a connection between them. I set them both to not update automatically when the configuration settings were accessed so as not to repeat the nightmare sometime in the future.

The routers' firmware had the settings built in to bridge them.

The house is the Southernmost structure at the bottom and the shop is the Northernmost at the top.

 

[lotust]

good thread, One question. On my WRT54G its got 2 antennas obviously. Do I need to make 2 cantennas? one for each?