new problem.. 500' in doors?

[ImpatientUser]

Ok, my current building (which I will be vacating as soon as the lease is up) won't give me roof access for a long distance link and wants to charge me an insane price to wire my office for cable internet. However, another tenant with plenty of bandwidth to spare is willing to let me borrow some. He is approximately 500' feet away though. There are many walls between the 2 of us as well. Would it be possible to make a wireless bridge between the 2 of us with these conditions? Once again any and all suggestions are appreciated. My budget is in the 1k$ range =).

Thanks.

P.S. While Im on the subject of indoors, does anyone have a favorite substitution for linksys routers and WAP11's? I'd like to find a brand with a little more power behind them for a little more range.

[M/Q]

That probably is a no go as well. You first would have to find out if there were any other wireless networks in between the two of you. If you are lucky enough not to have that problem, getting through that many walls will be virtually impossible. 802.11 has issues getting through a couple of home walls. Building, especially newer ones have metal studs and that really hampers signal propagation. In all honesty, I cannot say for sure that it would not work, but I would find it highly unlikely. Is there any way you could see each other outside of windows, like you both where on the same exterior wall?

[ImpatientUser]

Hrm, there are no networks between us. That part is at least not a problem. We are on the same external wall with windows, I just did not realize the signal could curve out one window and into the next... Oh, the windows do not open btw, so I can't stick anything out of them.


Has anyone had any experience with equipment from superpass (www.superpass.com)? Ran accross a good review on usenet and am curious to hear more.

Thanks =)

[M/Q]

I think you are messing with me, but to make sure, no the signal will not curve around. Personnally, I would try to explore other avenues., like shariing access with the next office instead.

[ImpatientUser]

Hehe... well I got confused... you asked if we could see each other out of windows if we're on the same external wall. Well we are on the same external wall, but the only way we could see each other is to lean out of the window... which would require me throwing a chair, or a landlord, through a window.

Anyways, I might have thought of something crazy. I am a newb and have no idea if this will work.

Could we both point AP's (or radios, or whatever you call them) out into the hall through a window (or maybe a thin wall) and then stick a repeater, something like a WAP11, in a closet in the hall?

I will attempt to draw, this should be awful.


--------Hall closet with WAP11-------
| |
Office (hateful steel walls) Office


I was right, that was awful. What I am trying to get at is sorta angling AP's pointed at the hall, and then sticking a repeater in the middle of the hall. There is a closet at almost the halfway point and it has a plug in there. The cleaning people said they don't care if I stick it in there =).

[M/Q]

Repeaters will not work as well as you think, and the very nature of a repeater requires that it have at least a 50% coverage area overlap, or the latency is unbearable. If you could see each other's office you could use a direction antenna with a very narrow coverge angle and that might work.

[DarkCelebi]

If you can both lean out the windows and see each other, you might attach a window box outside and put your AP out there to talk with his network. Although it is 500 FT. with a good directional antenna it should work.

If you can't attach something to the wall outside, then I am not sure what else you can do. My dad and I are working on something similar for the school he works at. Their building has been re-fitted and updated to new rules for building code, so it has metal in the walls, making wireless difficult. However, because we have roof access, we can run wireless links up there, it just allows people on the outside to have access as well (if they know the wep key, and can vpn to the server that gives them access to anywhere).

In my apartment building, we couldn't hang anything off the walls, except a satellite dish for getting TV. So, I used the mounts for it to add my wi-fi antenna so that I can see my network from anywhere I go in the small town I live in.