WiFi gurus - Please Help (Yagis and such)

[Marauder-]

Thanks in Advance -

Here is my current situation - I would like to share the bandwidth between my house and my cousins (1 block away) and potentially a few other friends. I've done some research on wireless networking and was wondering how I might accomplish this best. Would I need to either 1) use multi APs to bridge w/ one another in bridge mode w/ yagis pointed at the next bridge or 2) have some sort of omni directional antenna with all the yagis pointed to the one omni?

From what I understand about the bridges, all the people that have wireless networks in their setup already would need an extra AP to serve as a bridge only, i.e. each person would need 2 APs (one to serve as a bridge to the next bridge, and one in house for their own in-house wireless network). Or if they had a ethernet connected setup, they would just need a wireless router to bridge wireless and connect the in-house comps with ethernet cords.

Oh yeah, how would the bandwidth be split?

Thanks again for reading and responding.

 

[ktwebb]

Initially, with the one friend, you'd have a Point to Point bridge setup however since you foresee sharing with others I'd probably go ahead and prepare for a Point to Multipoint. In that scenario you'd have your "Parent" bridge plugged into your backbone somehow and a transmission cable run to an omni directional. Actually you could use a 180 degree vector panel antenna as well if all the houses were on one side of the house. Just depends on your environment. The Remote (Child) bridges would use some form of directional antenna pointing back to your antenna. Then yes, they would still need an AP to broadcast to wireless clients although I read some post not too long ago that allows, I think it was a D-Link AP, to bridge and broadcast to clients simultaneously. I never did like that feature on the Cisco Bridges and always recommended against it. Just seemed to flaky in my tests with the AP feature turned on the Cisco Bridges I am used to but to each his own. If your friends just had one PC then their bridge would connect directly to their wired NIC. If they had multiple PC's in the same room the the bridge would probably go to hub/switch and then if the wanted wireless Connectivity within their home then a second 802.11b device, a straight AP would connect to the hub via patch cable. The second AP would generally use a different SSID and definitely use a different channel set (base frequency). There are some things to consider when bridging outdoors. If your antenna is masted and above roofline you'll want to ground the mast and use lightening arrestors on the coax run. This not only creates extra cost, but also extra connectors, which will induce loss, especially if you are not schooled in crimping N or TNC connectors to coaxial transmission cable. If you have line of sight via windows then that is probably your easiest and cheapest option.

 

[Marauder-]

But wait - in your scenario - I would be the one just splitting my own DSL connection, correct? Would there be a way to merge all the existing bandwidth? And for the Omni idea - it seems a bit too complicated now and a bit too pricey. Let's say I want to connect 3 houses initially - would there be a way for it to point from one house to the next?

Point A -> Point B -> Point C -> Point A ?

 

[ktwebb]

No. Not with only one bridge at each house anyway. One parent bridge and however many child bridges you want to add given the overall bandwidth. Not sure what you mean by the omni being expensive. Your going to need aftermarket antennas if your a block away. No way around that. Assuming your block isn't 100 feet long. You can test, but any measurable distance will require solid line of sight and a good probability you will need higher gain, directional antennas at the remote site. If both remote sites are in the same general area you can get away with a directional at the main site too with a larger degree radiation pattern pointing back to your friends house.

You said you wanted to share your bandwidth. Trunking your existing connections can't be done with SOHO equipment. You want to talk about money, that would cost you some money. From the sounds of it your asking for something that is well out of the scope of budget wireless hardware.

 

[Marauder-]

Directional Antennas - is okay - we have 2 PVC Yagis and we're intending on constructing more after we get an intial working setup. I'm planning on using Pringles / Coffee Can Yagi designs. And I live in an apt building so I can achieve line of sight fairly easily. I guess my point about the omni is just the additional installation parts that you mentioned. Also - if I were to mount it on a rooftop, isn't there some sort of line loss per yard or so of the LMR100 cable? I think I would have to put the AP outside in order to achieve low loss.

As for "trunking" the combined bandwidth, how would that be accomplished?

Edit: One last Q (from this post at least): What if I were to just simplify it to point-to-point? If each side had a DSL backbone, and wanted to connect to each other, would trunking the bandwidth be easier?

 

[ktwebb]

LMR100? LMR400 is 6 dB of loss per 100 foot.

As far as the combining connections, perhaps there is someone reading this thread that might offer some advice. Or start another thread alltogether. My advice about that would be to just move on. Not happening.