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right here... it's about 2 miles long!.

But seriously, for outdoor 2.4GHz antennas, visit the FAB-CORP website. They sell all kinds of 2.4GHz WiFi and 5GHz 802.11a antennas. Also all the coax cables and adapters you'll need to connect a good outside antenna to most consumer-grade WiFi products too.

I presently have a wireless link spanning five and a half miles between two sites. We've got pretty good line-of-site, with only the tops of a few trees, and two highway overpasses sticking up into the fresnel zone, but it works mostly well 99% of the time except when the weather is really bad. At one end, there is a Linksys WET11 connected to a 24 dBi parabolic grid antenna on a 30' pole. The other end has a 12dBi omni antenna on a short pole above a rooftop connected to an old WAP11 access point.

Visit Fleeman Anderson and Bird's website for some good deals on wireless networking antennas, cables, etc. If you put your wireless radio device in a weatherproof box up on the antenna so that you can keep the jumper coax as short as possible, you'll be able to cover long distances with better signal strength and quality. Just run your power up the unused ethernet strands. Only use 4 strands of the ethernet for 10BaseT operation.

This is our amateur radio repeater that uses VoIP to link to other repeaters around the world. The link is 802.11b

Here is the AP that provides access.

Nothing special to do a 1000' link. Just a parabolic grid antenna on the client side.

Here are some parabolic grid antennas.

...to ASU. Unfortunately I'm not seeing the network (about 2 miles directly south). Might be time to put the ibook in the bookbag! I have plans to leave in about 10 minutes to watch the Foo Fighters (yeah yeah) anways.

Although, I do own a Fab-Corp Antenna and a Linksys WRTGS router with the new firmware. Any ideas?

Thanks for the info. Now we know that the Microsoft cards are yet another Prism card. :)

Here is a nice comparison page on wireless gear.

I can give you my opinions too. :)

For Linux, I've been very fond of the "Orinoco Gold" card. They're fairly easy to get online, work very well, and allow external antennas to be attached. I put an Orinoco Gold card in a Netgear PCIPCMCIA adapter (which is incorrectly marked that it only works with Netgear PCMCIA cards), and use that in my home machine now.

My newest love for wireless cards are the Senao "NL-2511 Plus EXT2" card. If you search for the model number, you'll find it sold under other names. Mine came in a white box, with no name, and room for a brand name sticker. :) This card has two antenna jacks on it. I have a whole collection of antennas and adapters that I've used with it. It's kinda fun to sit in a high place with a high gain antenna and slowly turn the antenna picking up different access points every few degrees. It's not really necessary, as with just a little 4dB antenna, I hear plenty of stuff. :)

I hate all the USB adapters. I've never bothered getting them to work on Linux, and with Windows or Mac they suck. Well, they're fine unless you want the connection to stay up. Some of them make Windows hang at boot time if they're attached.

For the card impared, the Linksys WET11 works great. You just attack it to an ethernet jack (or hub), and away you go. :)

I've ordered most of the wireless gear I have on the Internet, so it really doesn't matter that you're in a small town, you can still get it.

If you feel ambitious, there's a small shop in Florida that sells *GREAT* antennas. They're fab-corp.com.

I use an 18dB panel and a 24dB parabolic antenna attached to a pair of Linksys WAP11's as a bridge, for my come connectivity, over a 1/2 mile 802.11b link. You can see pictures here.

The WAP11's have a PCMCIA card built in, which tends to overheat if the location gets hot, so I disassembled one and put a fan on it (see the pic). It's not pretty, but works very well. I've been using it exclusively at home for several months. Occasionally, I'll loose my link, if it's windy, because the parabolic antenna is mounted to a very poor mast, but that's my own fault for not putting up a better mast on the house. It'll get blown about 10 to 15 degrees off, and receive no signal.

When I first set up the wireless link, I brought my laptop to the roof, and it reported 100% signal strength using the parabolic antenna. With a 4dB antenna, I had absolutely no signal. Makes it kind of hard for someone to evesdrop on my signal, unless they also have a high gain antenna and happen to be directly between the two points.

fab-corp has a lot of stuff, albeit somewhat pricey.

fab will give you an idea of whats out there.. you can ebay a lot of that stuff (or similar stuff) cheaper

Funny that you just posted this to Slashdot.. We've been trying to figure out how to connect several locations (houses, apartments, and offices) in an urban part of Los Angeles, without having to pay outragous fees for bandwidth and even simply the wiring. We have an office in a centralized location that already has a T1, going back to one of our colo's with real bandwidth...

You could do copper, but you're limited to 300m for Cat5. Anything longer, and you'll have to do some sort of modem. I don't know if you can put ?DSL modems back to back..

You could do fiber, but that'll probably end up costing you some bucks, and you'll have to be sure that the lines are safe (like, no one will accidently dig through them).

You don't say exactly where in N. Florida you are, but knowing Florida you're probably in a relatively flat area with lots of pine trees. You said several hundred acres, so I put that in an area calculator and found 1000 acres = 1.56sq miles, so none of your points are really very far from each other.. I think you're definately a candidate for wireless, if the trees stay out of the way.

Check out fab-corp.com for antennas.. No, not an advertisment. I just bought some stuff from them last week, and they were easy to deal with. They're also located in Florida, so your order will be there quick. My order got to California in about 3 days. If you were to put a sector antenna (like, the first one in the sector antennas section) in the center of the property, you should have good coverage to the whole property. I'd recommend for the best connection, get a good antenna for the receiving ends also, such as a 24db parabolic antenna.. Make sure when you mount them, you bolt them down tight, and be *VERY* sure you do good lightning supression.. I lived in Florida for years, and survived the hurricanes, and daily thunderstorms. :)

To give an idea of what kind of range you can expect, I bought a "24 dBi Mag Grid Antenna" (bottom of the parabolic antenna list), and attached it to a "Senao SL-2511CD PLUS EXT2" card. From an upper story of an office building, I started sweeping around with this antenna just listening (to estimate range. honest.) With a 4.5db blade antenna, I could hear 6 AP's, but only had a workable signal to one. With the 24db antenna I could hear over 2 dozen AP's. None of them were named for what they were, except one that said "YMCA"..

I asked some of the people who know the area well, "Is there a YMCA in that direction"? I know there's one closer, but it was about 60 degrees from where I was pointing. Turns out the YMCA I heard was a few miles away. So, with my 24db antenna talking to something resembling a normal AP (I doubt they had a directional antenna pointed at my office), I had a workable signal.

Before you start buying cards, I strongly recommend you check out Seattle Wireless. They have a *GREAT* page comparing wireless cards.. I highly recommend the Senao SL-2511CD PLUS EXT2.. It has two external antenna jacks (external antennas are required on this one). They also show an AP with the same card built in.. The Seano cards are suppose to put out 200mw, as opposed to most cards and AP's that are only around 30mw (check their chart), so you'll get much better range with them.

I hope this helps.

Open it up, and solder in some normal connectors...

The reason why 802.11b equip. has these funny connectors is becuase the FCC mandates that wireless equipment have "difficult to obtain" connectors.

If you don't want to solder, then go to http://www.fab-corp.com/ and see if they have what you want.

"Their secret weapon is a technology known as a "software-designed radio," which has permitted them to create an inexpensive repeater antenna that can be attached to the outside of a customer's home. The device, which the Etherlinx executives said they believe can be
built in quantity for less than $150 each, would communicate with a central antenna and then convert the signals into the industry-standard Wi-Fi, or wireless fidelity, signal for reception
inside the home."

Alan Clegg described pretty much the same thing with off the shelf hardware at Summercon recently. Except his solution was staying inside 802.11b and using a 2.4Ghz amplifier.

Granted, his objective was different and the "new" solution is a couple of bucks cheaper, but there are already off-the-shelf solutions that are there for the picking, without adding another licensing layer to the solution.

I had a rather unusual requirment; being able to use the 'net from an underground tornado shelter in order to monitor weather bureau radar. My one use of the shelter had me feeling safe but isolated from the progress of the storm. My solution was to use the Pismo with the external Silver card attached to an enternal antenna mounted outside on one of the air ventilation pipes. The antenna, from http://www.fab-corp.com/, is a 9.3 dBi directional patch 4.5 in. square. Casual trials before I mounted it allowed me to reach my AP from any point on my 2 acre property so if I was to guess I'd say the range increased by 300%.

We use antennas and amplifiers from Fleeman Anderson & Bird Corp.

We use antenna masts from Radio Shack.

We've found that the most reliable access points are Cisco Aironets, 340s or 350s. They can cost $1000-1500, though, so go with Linksys/SMC/Netgear if you're not that worried.

Also make sure you tie up cables on masts with something, like guy wire or metal cable ties, that doesn't disentigrate in a couple months. Always tape up the ends of the cables with electrical tape or use that rubbery stuff for protection from the weather.

And have fun!