Media for sharing internet across buildings

sharing internet across buildings

I just bought a vacation condo in Costa Rica, and will maybe spend 6 weeks a year down there. Inclding friends and friends of friends, we have about 12 units among us. We're thinking about having one condo have fast internet access and everyone else connect to him through wireless. Using a LinkSys WRT54G, and accessing with my Snoy VIAO, I can go one floor above, below, and across the hall and get a pretty good signal. Two floors away and it gets iffy. The complex consists of 8 6-story buildings in a circle each separated by about 100 feet. All of the condos in question have line-of-sight or are in the same building as the "master condo".

After a couple days perusal on the web, I've discerned (perhaps incorrectly):

1) 802.11a has less interference with phones, microwaves, etc so perhaps should be considered 2) I can spend $1000 for an "access point", which is different (better?) that a wireless router 3) I can buy antennas to attach to wireless routers to increase the range to over 500 meters 4) I can attach antennas to the receiving end as well

I'm headed back down to Costa Rica in April, and I hope to bring all the equipment I need with me to set this up. Any advice you guys can give me will be greatly appreciated. I think now I'm leaning towards Netgear 802.11g routers with antennas on both ends, but that's based on admittedly not enough information.

Regards,

Thomas