Media for Pelethora of Questions

Pelethora of Questions

Newbie Warning: This post will rable, so get out now if newbies annoy you.

OK, I live in an area without broadband access, so I decided to look at getting a long-range wi-fi connection to some houses nearby that could get broadband (definately less than 7ks).

I've done a lot of research in the past two days before hitting this group: About.com

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;-)

It seems that best performance gains come from highly-directional parabolic dish antenna, is this correct? Also, how "strict" is the directional element? The sites didn't say. At a long range, can I be off by a few degrees? Any tips for getting it right are also useful. I don't need the construct the dish to any particular specifications, do I? Not like having to calucate 3/4 wavelength were I to use a pringles-can design.

My main question, though, is about joining my home network to the network at the remote house.

Can I just have a computer at my house (connecting to my network) in ad-hoc mode with a router at the remote house, which is connected by crossover cable to that person's computer?

Or must I have two APs (or an AP at my house bridging to my network and a router at the remote house also connected to the 'net and thier computer)? If I used an AP, am I correct in thinking that I can connect it directly via ethernet to my switch (and therefore need no wireless cards at all)?

Someone told me that external antenna can only be attached to APs, and also it seems that USB cables have a maximum length of about 15 - which is too short for me (and I'm not buying an extension that converts to ethernet and back)... This would seem to suggest a network structure like:

192.168.x.x

KEY: | -- : Ethernet cable ~ ~ ~ : Wireless

Or the right-side of the diagram being alternately:

INTERNET | ~ ~ ~ AP----PC ROUTER 0.1 | 1.1 Thier Computer

Therefore the wireless stuff is but a bridge, with all the connections to computers themselves handled by ethernet.

Apologies again for the long post, but this stuff wasn't obvious - even from the About.com articles, which were very helpful. Also, it helps to have some people who know what they're doing directly look at the case.

Thanks for any replies :-)