Networks How can I get highspeed?

Hey
Ive been trying to find alternate ways to get highspeed because I've been stuck with dialup my whole life. No solution has worked and I am still waiting to get highspeed. Anyway highspeed finally came to where I live (20km outside a city) and I still can't get it ! My friend who is 400 feet away from he has it, and I've made many phone calls and waited over two months for a *****ng tech guy to haul his lazy ass up and test my lines. The company (Aliant) ran a test and said I couldn't get it but that might have been because of their system having a bad reading, so thats why they need a tech to double check. The only way he will check is if he has time after doing work around my community and can stop at my place. Excuse my profanity, i hate dialup and I cant play games.

So I began thinking about ways to get highspeed from his house to mine. Buying a 400ft cable and stringing it across from his house to mine wont work, it would cost a bit too much to od. Then I thought about a Wifi can. Set up a transmitter at his house and a reciever at mine and it should work.. right?

I don't know a whole lot about these and was hoping someone here would tell me if this would work. There are some trees in between our houses so it's not a clear direct line of sight, but I can see his house from my roof. Or if anyone has any alternate ideas I am all ears.

Thanks for reading,
-aaron

 

Here are some pictures:



-aaron

 

With 2 outdoor accesspoints in bridgemode or dedicated wireless bridges and a couple of directional antenna's your done.
Just line up the antenna's correctly and set the wireless bridge devices so they connect.
Most work is the mounting part. You'll need to drill some holes to screw the wifi devices (bridge and antenna) to the wall and let a network cable in.

 

It could work, but theres a lot of trees in the way, and its pretty far for WiFi. You'd need a beefy antenna. I've always wondered if one of those old TV towers people have around still would work as a good antenna, they are really big, and omnidirectional. If you had one of those that you don't use anymore it may work, but I am no expert.

Most importantly, does your friend know you want to do this? Does he not mind you stealing his bandwidth? Also, the connection would be pretty slow because its so far, the signal would probably be quite weak without a giant antenna or satellite dish.

 

You said you wanted to game, wireless is a bad thing for gaming. Especially over that far a distance, your latency will probably be pretty poor.

 

ozstriker: better this than using dialup

matthegamer463: Its not that far. With a 5 to 8 dbi gain antenna you'll get through. (think of the 100m in open field in the wifi standard. every 3 dbi gain is a doubling of the range)
People have done distances of 10KM with a biquad dishfeed antenna. (biquad directional panel antenna on a satelite dish).
A simple set of panel antennas arent that expensive, and often have way over 8dbi gain.

By the way: most people interpret "gain" als more power, but what the "gain" thing actualy is, is the degree of signal aiming.
More dbi equals more of the signal pointed in the right direction.
With omni antenna's it means that the signalfield is being squashed flat (from apple shape to donut shape to pancake if you get enough gain).

And TV antenna's don't make good Wifi antenna's since they are made for a completely different frequency. Wifi antenna's often look awefully small compared to their equaly ranged TV-antenna brothers, but thats because the wavelength is shorter.
And yes, that has effect on the physical size. The whole wave actualy has a size (like ocean waves, but this time they are invisible), and since its smaller length, the antenna can be smaller because it doesn't need a large surface to catch the wave.

I don't know if you ever taken a look ate home brew wifi antenna's but high gain models consist of segments. Each segment is actualy an individual antenna, but combined they aim the direction. Each segment is exactly one wavelength long, to be able to catch the wave, and not other waves.

 

Thanks for the posts guys. I did talk to him about it and he said he wouldn't mind. I know wireless gaming is crappy but it's better then dial up.

Matt you said that it would slow his connection down, by how much would it slow it down?

McKaamos some nice points thank you very much. What would I have to buy to be able to accomplish this and how much would it cost? I really hate dial up and want to be able to figure this out, so I might put a bit of monye into it. First i'll make a visit to the internet company and talk to someone face to face to try and straighten things out.
-aaron

 

Well, it depends.
If you are both web browsing (where you arent constantly downloading or uploading information) then it is unnoticable, but if you were both gaming, the internet speeds would be cut in half roughly. Its like trying to download 2 things at a time, it tends to make both download at 50% speed. It may or may not be a real issue, if his internet connection is fast enough then it won't matter, because your combined usage will not tax the internet connection too heavily. If his is say, only 5X faster than dialup, then it would be pretty bad when 2 people are on.

 

Ive looked up those bridge units.
The outdoor systems will set you back around 250 euros or more.
Using an indoor version and just extending the antenna wire you can get them much cheaper.
Something like this
combined with something like this or this antenna.
Both powerfull enough to get you a few kilometers further, and not too pricey.

With that you'll prolly need a couple of "pigtails" and some good coaxial cable (Airplus, RG317, something like that. very thick coaxial for high frequencies)