Connecting LAN to remote AP?

Question

For a temporary setup I need to connect a number of PC's (perhaps 8?) to the Internet. We do not have ADSL or similar in the building but there is an open AP about 500m away, mounted on a rooftop. Walking outside our building with my laptop and wireless card I can see the AP, signal strength around

5-10% but useable, giving me all the internet access I want for just the laptop.

For this event I need reliable signals inside and best bandwith performance so I'm thinking of putting an antenna on an adjacent mast, presumably giving me a strong signal even using a simple omni antenna. Distance into the building will be around 50m so antenna cable is out of the question, so I suppose it should be UTP cat 5 instead. Inside I want to hitch that to a router (or two) connecting the PC's.

Just what do I need outside in the mast? I'm a newbie to wireless and read about access points, clients, bridges and repeaters but am confused as to what the difference is. At home I have a simple AP (Sweex wireless router

11G LC000070), could I use that to receive the remote AP and feed the indoor router? How? If not, what else should I get? The motto is KISS and low-budget...

Paul

Smowk · Answer

"Paul"  wrote innews:5a45e$431e047c$513b43d8$     netgear has some nice directional antenna's for a cheap price, and they plug right into the back of any netgear router or AP

Paul · Answer

For a temporary setup I need to connect a number of PC's (perhaps 8?) to the Internet. We do not have ADSL or similar in the building but there is an open AP about 500m away, mounted on a rooftop. Walking outside our building with my laptop and wireless card I can see the AP, signal strength around

5-10% but useable, giving me all the internet access I want for just the laptop.

For this event I need reliable signals inside and best bandwith performance so I'm thinking of putting an antenna on an adjacent mast, presumably giving me a strong signal even using a simple omni antenna. Distance into the building will be around 50m so antenna cable is out of the question, so I suppose it should be UTP cat 5 instead. Inside I want to hitch that to a router (or two) connecting the PC's.

Just what do I need outside in the mast? I'm a newbie to wireless and read about access points, clients, bridges and repeaters but am confused as to what the difference is. At home I have a simple AP (Sweex wireless router

11G LC000070), could I use that to receive the remote AP and feed the indoor router? How? If not, what else should I get? The motto is KISS and low-budget...

Paul

DS · Answer

If you use a bridge with a directional antenna to receive your internet access from then take the bridge's cat 5 from it to your router's wan port and run cat 5 from the routers LAN to each computer you need access on. You can make the router get it's IP address from the active AP and set up you own different set of DHCP IP addresses for your internal network. Hope you can understand that.

SMS · Answer

You will want an Ethernet access point, with an external antenna jack, right next to the antenna, so you can have a very short antenna cable. Some models offer the ability to power it over the CAT 5 with some extra equipment at each end.

I would not count on an omnidirectional antenna. As long as you know where the other AP is located, use a directional antenna.

Connecting LAN to remote AP?

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