what kind of equipment I need for long distance WIFI

What is the MSL elevation of both locations?

Any hills of buildings in the path, if so...how far away from both points and how high.

How much speed do you need?

What kind of reliability?

99% for an annual downtime average of 15 minutes per day? 99.9% for less than two minutes per day? 99.99% for less than ten seconds a day?

Are you in California where WiFi has been shown to contribute to birth defects and need to use reduced power? Ok, that's just a joke.

If more than 1,000 ft or so are you willing to spend as much as $700 to $900 for the project?

Will you have a phone line at the far end? Can you get DSL? Will you want to use a VoIP setup for your phone from teh house instead?

I've seen a stock $59 Linksys go over 1,000 ft to a laptop internal card. Was it reliable? NO! The money you are willing to spend is proportional to your success.

Hello, in a word, you need a couple of wireless bridges like these

It is important to know:

what amount of bandwidth you need; the distance between the two buildings you would like to connect (meters or kilometers); if it is possible to create LOS (line of sight) link; etc...

If I were you, I would use a 5 GHz wireless system.

Check out these web sites:

Regards.

kustomjs hath wroth:

Assuming you have line of sight, two big dish antennas at each end of the link. Antennas have the biggest impact on increaing signal strength, sensitivity, and reducing interference pickup. Since you don't seem to believe in disclosing numbers such as distance and speed, I won't bother you with model numbers. Just about any wireless bridge radio will work, but I would not suggest the absolute cheapest.

If you don't have line of sight, give up now. If you have marginal line of sight, you'll need to do some experimenting. If you have other wi-fi users along the line of sight, you're going to have inteference problems. Do a "site survey" which means plugging a radio into the dish antenna(s) and looking for other users with Kismet (Linux) or a spectrum analyzer. If you see strong signals, you're going to have a problem.

You'll find the necessary link calculations at:

DTC hath wroth:

Don't laugh but I was on the planning department advisory committee for the Peoples Republic of Santa Cruz County for establishing regulations for cellular tower installation. During the endless proceedings, the planning department decided to include all forms of wireless including wi-fi. Someone seriously proposed that a large sign be placed in front of every business that uses Wi-Fi as a warning to customers that their brains might pablumified if exposed to Wi-Fi radiation. I made some sample signs to underscore the problem, but didn't have a chance to present them as the proponents had been warned and quietly dropped their proposal.

Danger 2,400,000 Hz.

Close for low end hardware. Assuming free labour, I've done 1 mile links with much less. Using retail pricing: 24dBi dish $80 Coax and pigtail $40 WHR-HP-G54 $70 Mounting hdwr $20 ===== Total $210 per end

or $420 for both ends.

Substitute a pair of Cisco Aironet 1240AG bridges, and the total is perhaps $1500 or more. However, it's still cheaper than a cross town T1 and break even for 2 DSL lines in about 2 years.

I was thinking of a pair of 5.8 GHz units with built in 23 dB antenna.

Total cost with mounting hardware would be about $600 and it would be commercial grade. Not counting the labor or anything else.

BUT why not just get another install at the other location ? Why go thru all the hoops to patchwork a backhaul connection, unless there is no telecom (phone/DSL) connection at the remote location ?

Basically it all really comes down to LOS - line of sight - If you can't physically see the other location, neither can the microwaves.

here's another link & product page - for more learning... (this is from another thread from someone wanting to WiFi across .5mile)

sure of other main stream or mass market products in this same category; self-contained patch antenna + access point electronics POE - power over Ethernet... easier to remote from rest of network