Wireless bridge w. external antenna?

[PiqueABoo]

My daughter's hard-up primary has a .11b AP somwehere in a main building and USB wireless gadgets for a few PCs in a separate nursery/reception building on the other side of the playground. These PCs will sometimes get 11Mb if the USB thingy is in just the right place, but these PCs usually seem to be running at 1Mb. Obviously needs a little switch/cabling in the nursery but I think if they have a wireless bridge with directional attenna at each ends they might get at least a consistent 11Mb and probably more from .11g.

Has anyone done a cheapish wireless bridge with external directional attennae recently? If so what kit did you use etc?

[ICT_GUY]

http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/448

Or get a cheap repeater. Does depend on how many clients are trying to connect and what they are trying to do.

The above link had a certain amount of fun value, but a friend of mine beams a rather fast internet connection from work to his house 1/2 a mile away using a very slightly improved home made design.

[OutToLunch]

http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/448 - need to knock the smiley off the end for that link to work...

There's also the templates on http://www.freeantennas.com/projects...te2/index.html which may be easier to knock up.

For our bridges, we just used a pair of Netgear access points and linked them via the web admin - this covered a smallish gap (10m ish?) across a playground quite happily. Our older bridge is only 802.11b but a pair of Buffalo Airstations with proper directional antennas which have been working quite happily (if slowly!) for the last 3 years - again, just set up via the web interface on the access point.

[dhicks]

Has anyone done a cheapish wireless bridge with external directional attennae recently? If so what kit did you use etc?

I used a Linksys WET54G to link a portacabin up to our network. Never did get very good reception out of it, but I have a feeling that was more something to do with the originating wireless access point and the military jets coming in to land a few feet from the roof. Always had the nasty feeling that one day a Tornado pilot would leave the electronic counter measures switch on and the last thing I'd see would be an auto-launched anti-radar missile heading for my office window...

--
David Hicks

[BooBoo]

I use a Cisco 1300 Bridge with an omnidirectionanl antenna as a Root Bridge and have 2 Non Root Bridges with Wireless Clients, 1 in a Portcabin (100m with standard indoor arials) and the Sports Hall (200m Directional 8.5 gain antenna)
I had some cheap stuff on trial but as soon as we loaded the APs up the performance dived.
Some places do great Edu discounts on Cisco stuff so it might be cheaper than you think.

[BooBoo]

ICT what school are you from?

[john]

Antenna on the Cheap (er, Chip) - need to knock the smiley off the end for that link to work...

There's also the templates on Ez-12 which may be easier to knock up.

For our bridges, we just used a pair of Netgear access points and linked them via the web admin - this covered a smallish gap (10m ish?) across a playground quite happily. Our older bridge is only 802.11b but a pair of Buffalo Airstations with proper directional antennas which have been working quite happily (if slowly!) for the last 3 years - again, just set up via the web interface on the access point.

Have you got external antennas on them or just got them in windows?

[kmount]

Been over a year since this thread tapered off ... think the OP found a solution or ran a really long network cable!