I did a wireless internet installation at a friend's restaurant, and I'm in need of some assistance. I've now been asked to light up a second building and a large back yard party / wedding area that are across a street, and owned by the same folks that own the restaurant. I figured I should be able to (pretty painlessly) share the single cable modem service that they are paying for, between both buildings.
In this sketch that I posted
Across the street, is "site B", that I need to light up with wifi, preferably without paying a monthly fee for a 2nd internet account.
The setting of all this is up in the hills, so there isn't much in the way of city noise or interference.
So, to be more specific about the existing wifi setup at the restaurant: We have a nice speedy Cable Modem connection shared with a dlink DI-624. I pulled off the original dlink external antenna, and am using an inline hawking hsb1 signal amplifier
Also any clue what the difference between the 9dBi HAO9SIP and 8dBi HAO8SI antenna is?
In and around that restaurant, I get speeds of 4500 kbps through broadbandreports.com speed test, so I've got a solid cable modem wifi setup at the restaurant.
So now for the difficult part... sharing / beaming that service over to "site B"
I've tried the following methods:
1) I placed a DWL-G800AP d-Link repeater at the front of the restaurant as close as possible to "site B", I then replaced the stock antenna with a TRENDnet TEW-0A14DK 14dBi Directional Outdoor Antenna which I aimed at "site B". This product claims on the box, "up to 5 Mi (8 KM) range". The results at "site B" were unimpressive. Low to no signal strength depending on where within "site B" I was testing. A broadbandreports.com speed test gave me a 150 kbps download and a higher 400 kbps upload. A far cry from the 4 MB/sec in and around the restaurant.2) Since I already had a strong source at the restaurant with the omnidirectional hawking amplifier and antenna, I decided to try placing the repeater at site B with the TRENDnet directional antenna pointing back at the restaurant's antenna. This greatly improved my signal strength at "site B", since it was now picking up the wifi signal from the local d-Link repeater, but my broadbandreports.com speed tests were still down at 200 kbps. I assume this HUGE speed hit is the result of the distance between the restaurant and site B, which I estimated as
250 feet (took me 100 paces to walk from door to door and I'm 5'6"). certainly the advertised range of the TRENDnet directional antenna of 5 miles far exceeds this, so I'm wondering if this antenna isn't working well with the d-link repeater.I'm open to any and all suggestions about how to get this 2nd site lit up with wifi properly. I've heard you take a speed hit when using multiple repeaters. I've heard your bandwidth gets cut in half, but I'm only using one repeater, and my speed hit is WAY WORSE than getting cut in half.
I must admit, I'm curious about the combo of that hawking amplifier AND outdoor antenna (if I've thrown money away there), (and if that trendnet directional antenna is working with the dlink repeater) but most importantly, how the heck SHOULD I get wifi sent over and shared properly at the 2nd site. Thanks in advance for any info you can provide about what I should try next.