wireless antenna requirements

[muzzy]

Hey I was thinking of networking my machine with my mate's down the road (200m) using 802.11b wireless NICs. There's a good line of sight between our houses. What kind of antenna do you think would be required? if

a) 2 walls were inbetween the antennae(?!)

b) if the antennae were mounted on the roof

cool thanks i'm completely new to wireless.

[PULS8R]

Even though you're from brissie I tihnk this site will help you out.

http://melbourne.wireless.org.au/

I'm no wireless expert (still reading up on it) but an Omni-directional antenna should do the trick.

Walls don't help, and the roof is the best place to get them up, as high as your council will allow for the best LOS.

[Lowgoz]

just boufght a Netgear MA101 from computer alliance, does around 600 meters in the open so HOPEfully it should do the trick for you. Setting up external antennas is very very costly. all up your looking at around 3-400 dorah for the cabeling, pigtails, card, and antenna. If you can pick up the netgear wireless usb thingie its only 130 bucks.

give the guys a call and tell them what you want to do, say you were thinking of (as mentioned above). if they say that should be fine, and it doesn't work, you then have a right to take it back.. so your covering your ass both ways. then ask them when you get in there if they will knock 10 bucks off cus you are paying in cash (HINT) and they will do it for you.

and PLEASE read up on 80211 security! i dont wanna drive past your house and see an unencripted free cabel internet link! Bad [people can and will hack it mate so make sure you read up on it. Good place to start is
http://www.sans.org/rr/paper.php?id=167
http://www.iirg.org/wirehack01.html

easy

[mibberz]

lowgoz he was after a antenna not a device

ok im from melb wireless and i will try to help you

idealy if you got a omni (90$)(even made a home brew about 30$) and mounted that on the roof of one of the houses, then a cantenna or even the stock antenna should get a link, but ofciouse we want the best link we can get right?

you could put 2 25db grids and aim right at that wall and you will get a kick ass singal but thats overkill

2 cantennas on the roof will do if you use a short run of rg213(6 or lower meters) or a longer run of lmr400 5 or greater meters)

what devices you useing currently?

[mibberz]

cheapest link i can think of which wont be that great useing the method above is 75+60+35 thats useing these cheapass pci cards in ad-hoc mode

pigtail 35
cantenna and cable 75
card 60

if you fly me to qld i will set it all up for you

[muzzy]

awesome, thanks for the references and advise

i think i'll look at homebrew antennas first, but yeah what's adhoc? all the wireless nics I see around are 802.11b and cost roughly ~110

btw, security shouldn't be an issue.. the wireless NIC will be installed into my debian server and i should be able to knock up reasonable security with IPtables. security over wireless is a bit of a grey area yeah?

[mibberz]

theres been some cheap ass cards going resently

like i always say you pay for what you get

i use cisco cous i like my wireless

if you go thru on here im sure you will find a post in this forum about the cheaper cards, i still quote them as crap, but i have a 36km link

ad-hoc is one of the modes that they can talk in, its like a language if i spoke frence and you spoke frence then people would hate us, but more or less thats ad-hoc

its good for a peer to peer link, no good for 5+users on long distance links

[Lowgoz]

you dont need an external antenna for 200 meters mate, thats what i was saying'

[Greystorm]

200 metres through a couple of walls though, plus it's out doors with all sorts of buildings and trees around. I'd put a directional antenna on each end (cantenna or grid) mounted on the roof.

[mibberz]

Lowgoz well as you never did say that in your post thanks for making us aware of what you where trying to say, but as real life over 200meters with 2-3 walls antennas are a good idea unless you like to have the network spend more time down than up

[muzzy]

Originally I thought it would probably work without an antenna.. But for a worthwhile signal... What kind of transfer rates do you think a network like this could achieve if we both knocked up some simple antennas?

[Greystorm]

I seem to remember getting about 500kB/sec on an 11mb wireless connection.

Speaking of which, I must test my throughput on my new IPSec wireless connection.

Edit: I'm getting about 300kBps via the IPSec tunnel.

[mibberz]

300-500 is what you will be expecting