I've climbed mountains, pulled elevation plots, dug 200+ feet of trench, run power and cable, employed step-up and step-down tranformers, bought and built antennas, erected tripods/towers, and more, all in a quest for high-speed Internet at my home, in the mountains, on a shoestring budget.
Yet, here I am struggling with the part of the project that I expected to be the easiest. I am trying to figure out how to configure my four existing pieces of equipment to pass a signal over 2 miles in a "point-to-point-to-point" network (two point-to-points, or a point-to-point with an active repeater in the middle, however you look at it).
I have these 4 pieces of equipment:
- ActionTec combo DSL Modem & Wireless AP
- LinkSys WET11 v1
- LinkSys BEFW11S4 v4
- Cheap CompUSA wireless/4port router
Here's the configuration:
- Internet...
- ActionTec combo DSL modem/wireless AP ... located at home of my nearest neighbor
(((... wirelessly beamed 1.8 miles to... )))
- WET11 v1 on a mountain peak
---- connected via ethernet cable, back-to-back, to ----
- BEFW11S4 v4 on same mountain peak
(((... wirelessly beamed 0.33 miles to... )))
- CompUSA router... in my home
---- ...connected via ethernet cables to... ----
- Multiple PCs in my home.
So, #3 & #4 above are meant to be the wireless repeater on the mtn peak. Each of these four pieces of equipment is attached to its own parabolic or sector antenna. I've managed to pick up signals from the various pieces independently (2 to 3, 3 to 4, 4 to 5), but not all together yet.
What I'm struggling to figure out is:
- Which of these four pieces should be set up to act as the AP?
- Can #3 and #4 be connected back-to-back to form an active repeater? (I'm hoping to avoid the issue of throughput being cut in half by using two radios)
- Can multiple boxes be configured as access points? (Doesn't the CompUSA router need to be an AP in order to service the PCs in my home? Meanwhile, doesn't one of the two devices on the peak need to be an AP in order to act as a repeater?) If so, how?
Thanks in advance.