3 mile wifi hookup

If it were easy, it would be no fun.

1. Wireless routers do not normally talk to each other unless they support WDS. The DI-524 does not support WDS and will not work.
2. The HD18035 antenna is a 24dBi dish. That will probably work fine.
3. Do the path calculations. See:
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   me if you need help. Make a decision if the wireless devices will be near the antenna or at the lossy end of a long coax cable run. How long?
4. Ever hear about things like feet or meters? How high is the house? How high is the other end? How high are the antennas? The problem is that at 3 miles, 80% of the fresnel zone clearance at midpoint is about 32 ft. Your antennas will need to be at least 32 feet off the ground or the fresnel zone will hit the ground. I you have buildings, trees, hills, and other obstructions in the way, probably higher:
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   's more than just the top of the trees that may be in the way.

Gary "The Bear" [ 2006/10/05 15:10 ] :

Hi Gary,

I'm new on this wire.

I agree all points raised by Jeff. You have to answer some basic technical questions to see if it's a realistic project.

May I suggest you a couple of things :

The DWL-2100AP multi-mode radio would be a good equipment for you application. It's cheap and supports several modes including WDS. If you go with this unit, make sure to update the devide with the most recent firmware.

Use a DI-524 on the high speed connection side and a DWL-2100AP at the remote site (configured in client mode). If you want to plug more than one PC at the remote site, use your second DI-524 and plug the DWL-2100AP in the WAN port of the router. To avoid any conflict, make sure to use a different IP range for your remote site.

A good 24dBi grid is a DC24 made by Pacific Wireless. Depending the distance (free space loss), an optional antenna would be a PA24-19, this one has 19dBi of gain.

Maxim

Maxim Chartrand hath wroth:

Just a note on WDS. WDS is handy, useful, and sometimes actually works. However, it's incompatible with WPA encryption due to the use of dynamic encryption keys. It's one or the other, not both. If you're going to use WDS, be prepared to run inferior WEP security.

In client mode, WPA encryption will work just fine.

Yes, and even when routers DO support WDS many often have to be configured to even speak with each other.

Given the other hassles with WDS (no WPA and reduced bandwidth) I'd never want to bother using it.