Parent-Friendly Wireless Bridge To Span 500 Meters?

GonnaBRichYeahYeah! writes "My dad lives down a dirt road 500 meters off the main road. The cable company will not put cable down his lane for any less than the ridiculous sum of $10,000. And he cannot get phone line DSL since he is so far away from the central terminal, so he relied on painful 22k/sec dial-up for access to the Internet. He got sick of it and relies on Hughes satellite Internet, at $60/month, but he still has to be connected to a phone line to upload to the Internet. It's not a good solution, but better than dial-up. His friend lives on the corner of the main drag with his lane and has cable, thus hi-speed Internet. I suggested that he get a wireless access point, and put it at his friend's house and then get a wireless card for access. The problem is that no wireless routers go that far (max range of -N is 200 feet) and WiMax is too complex for a 70-year old man. Any suggestions from Slashdot crowd would be helpful." Plenty of people make wireless links over longer distances, but often they're not suited for people who want simplicity and reliability. What's the best out there right now?

Comments

Novaroam stuff works well (900Mhz no license band)

[VoxBoston]

http://novaroam.com/ - used by police, fire, etc. Good penetration through trees and foliage, unlike WiFi. Mesh networking capable if you need it (although your setup sounds like point-to-point).

-Karl
A rock record: http://www.instarmusic.com/

Re:Are you serious?

[Applekid]

Let A = cost of beers for able-bodied friends
B = cost of equipment (free because you already have it? Power tool rental?)
C = cost of submitting a request to the county
D = cost of cables, conduits, etc that gets buried.

If A + B + C + D $10,000 that the cable company is quoting, then it's a good deal. If it gets a permit and is all done to code there's nothing the cable company can sue about... especially since he'd just basically extended their infrastructure at no cost to them.

There's always inviting a cell tower to be built on your property. In such a case the cell companies would wind up buring some kind of infrastructure anyway to support it. When that happens, call again and all of a sudden, wouldn't you know it, you've got cabling all up to practically your doorstep.

Re:Consider the do it yourself way...

[JWSmythe]

  I just emailed him, but .... you're right.

    I actually did this before. It was with a pair of WAP11's (current at the time), a 24dBi parabolic, and a 19dBi panel. It was 100% reliable, except for a few circumstances.

    After a year, a bamboo tree grew up through the line of site.
    One end was in an office, and the WAP11 would overheat because the A/C was turned off on the weekends, and the cleaning crew would shut off the fan blowing on the AP.
    In one strong wind, I found I hadn't secured the antenna well enough, and it turned. :)

    They were all easy, obvious problems.

    In his case, an AP with a high gain antenna on one end, and a decent antenna on the distant end attached to his wireless device would be fine.