help needed 2000ft wlan

[adventure570]

Im trying to find out what equipment and antennas i will need. my workshop (single story wood construction 40x40 feet) is is 2000 feet from my house at my house i have my pc and a cable modem. my workshop sits up on a hill about 25 degrees. there are 6 very old oak trees in behind the house about 150 feet up the hill. I can see my workshop thru the trees but branches do block parts of the view ( the rest of the way is open fields). i have 2 computers and a notebbok computer in the workshop. i would like all of them to be able to have access to the cable modem and to each other. the notebook gets moved around in side and outside of the workshop. i would rather not go about this in a trial and error method. My intial thoughts is to set up a peer to peer multipoint. if this is the right track what type of equipment would i need. if not can somone point me in the right direction.

[BER_vs_SNR]

There are many ways to skin this cat depending on what your application and load requirements would be.

If you don't want to experiment with a trial-and-error approach I would not recommend a peer-to-peer set of links but a point-to-point instead, something like the following:

Put a wireless router on your cable modem. Then use a good directive antenna from your house to your store on a point-to-point link. These can be mounted on windows for instance at both ends of the link. A wireless client bridge at the store can connect a small hub/switch to either an Ethernet if your store needs can be met by a wired LAN or to a small AP in the store if you prefer full mobility in the store for your laptop and 2 PCs.

I would also ideally look into equipment that is b/a compatible. B is more mature in terms of available products but may have some problems with your trees. Besides the bandwidth it offers over your little "bottleneck" between the house and the store, 802.11a has better transmission characteristics in the open space (as you describe it is open fields around the trees) and as it runs at a higher frequency band, the OFDM subcarrier carrier wavelengths are shorter, therefore more comparable in size to openings in the branches and foliage etc. and they therefore may allow the transmission even THROUGH the trees without too much diffraction and scattering losses. If you have transmission losses or bandwidth problems with 802.11b then you can always turn to 802.11a from the same equipment without more expense.

[adventure570]

i like that idea of the a/b do you have any recomendations on what brand / model of equipment ? do i need more or less than a 13 db gain antenna? i was first looking at d-link, then i was leaning towards the airpoint products from smartbridges but i think they are just b

[x586]

Read this thread.
http://forums.sudhian.com/messageview.cfm?catid=78&threadid=37386&highlight_key=y&FTVAR_MSGDBTABLE=

Pay particular attention to the my Saturday July 19, 2003 12:29 AM post.
I think that will answer most of your questions.

x586

[BER_vs_SNR]

Sure. There is plenty of that type of material around. Check out also for instance:

http://www.turnpoint.net/wireless/has.html

and

http://www.qsl.net/wk8l/

Of course it depends on whether you want to build the antennas or not, but I had understood your original question as more of to how to go about solving your problem that was seemingly bigger than just the choice of antennas.

[adventure570]

i quess its a multipart question. im planning on buying the antennas and gear. the biggest thing is now that we got a plan ( yours) with an a/b option. next is determining the right equipment. and how much gain is needed. there is just way too many options out there and most companies seem to be over stating the ranges. so now which equipment is best suited

[BER_vs_SNR]

If you don't intend on building antennas and pigtails etc. there are two fundamental families of products that you will need to look into (besides a wireless router) based on access point functionality needed and your available budget: (a) residential gateways (geared for the home) and (b) corporate gateways (geared for the enterprise).

As far as I can tell unfortunately you are sitting right on the proverbial fence between the two so you will have to make a philosophical decision as to which direction you want to go.

You need (i) coverage and (ii) upgradability of the firmware along with (iii) security and (iv) the ability to "play" with externally mounted antennas of various designs to optimize your solution. These capabilities are not easily offered by home/residential gateways.

As a minimum, make sure you have fundamental services like an embedded DHCP server, NAT, (and even maybe an IPsec passthrough capability in case you use VPNs).

I don't know what your budget is but I would say you look into one of the mainstream product lines; Cisco Aironet 350, 3Com Airconnect, Orinoco (Lucent) AP-1000 and AP-2000, Proxim RangeLAN2, etc. squeezing the vendors for details on upgradeability of either the wireless interface cards and/or firmware to accommodate 802.11a (along with Wi-Fi5 certification). I would also strongly recommend that you use WPA-enabled products in terms of security. Many talk about it but few are already delivering it.