well i have broadband wifi, and a friend of mine who lives less than 1km away is very, very poor and only has dial up.

is there any way to boost my signal so he can fully use it?

with say a cable tv/foxtel satellite?
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on an unrelated note, if i wanted to steal my neighbors satellite dish could i just cut it out or would i need those cables?

Defcon had a contest about doing this a few years ago. Look it up.

Do you have line-of-sight to his place / can you site an antenna in a place that does?

Do you have line-of-sight to his place / can you site an antenna in a place that does?

say no line of sight, his house is 4.2km away, im using SpeedStream 6250 wifi modem, wat will i need etc

That distance a bit long isn't it.


Anyway i am also interested in doing the same thing except mine is less then 400m i think.

But Line of sight is an issue. But hopefully i will be able to do it.


But there is one big problem


Equipment + Money

:(


http://www.monolith81.de/node/13 <---- link

Off to DiY?

^ orly

why would you want it 1km when it sais 4.2km in your post>(2 above me i think).

Im thinking an antenna.

http://windsurf.mediaforte.com/wifi/wifi.html

http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/business/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=175801233

two cantennas (one either end) and the max power your router can go to, as long as they're well lined up, should be fine.

any further, get a couple of wrt54g's (the old, hackable ones) and bump on dd-wrt and shoot the power up to 100mW.

Apart from the fact that it is illegal to use wifi over property borders, 2.4GHz will not bend well. You would have to use a repeater. If you have a mate that can see both of your houses you should be good. Rain will still be a problem.

if you have a mate in the middle who can see both houses, 4 cantennas, and a wrt54 router running dd-wrt in repeater mode will do the job perfectly. hell, at a push, weatherproof the whole thing, make it look official, and attach it to the top of a lamp post that has line of sight to both houses. Attach a sticker something like 'property of the municipal council - electrical hazard, danger of death'. If you know what you are doing, you can then 'borrow' electricity from the streetlight. If you don't, solar panels + charging circuitry + battery, but in all honesty, that would probably get noticed, and cost more than just buying your mate broadband.

If your house is only *just* eg, round the corner, then its straight, consider the possibility of if you do know a house on the end that does have line of sight. speak to them, and ask if its ok to mount a cantenna somewhere discreet on their roof. The take cat5e, with power over ethernet to their house (if you live in terraced houses, run 2 ethernet cables (redundancy) over the roofs, if not, use the municipal phone line posts. Use a poe splitter to then power the router.

all slightly crazy solutions...but then, I don't know your situation :)

http://usbwifi.orconhosting.net.nz/

If I put a cantenna up on a pole where my TV Aerial used to be.. will the rain affect it a lot..? what would be the best way to protect it from the rain if so..

Also - does it need to be pointed in any particular direction or what?

yes, cantennas are highly directional and need to be fairly well aligned. Take compass bearings or similar.

Pringles cans aren't desperately weatherproof, you could use a coffee can or similar, or put some sort of plastic shield on the cantenna to help keep it from the rain.

yes, cantennas are highly directional and need to be fairly well aligned. Take compass bearings or similar.

Pringles cans aren't desperately weatherproof, you could use a coffee can or similar, or put some sort of plastic shield on the cantenna to help keep it from the rain.

On BSODTV they say you should use a 3-3.5 inch diameter, 8 inch long can. Something about waveguide or something.

yeah, theres certain lengths of can that you want to use due to the wavelength of the wifi signals. google it.

1km is easily possible though, and you shouldnt even have problems in rain. cantennas or metal sieves are the way forward. with 6 foot diameter satellite dishes, at defcon, some hackers got 3kbps @ 125 miles using standard unamplified wifi signal.

What I meant by rain being a problem is that microwaves don't like traveling through rain. I know there are some problems with microwave links for TV stations, mobile phone towers etc, during rain. At your distances you should be alright during rain.
Why bother weatherproofing it? It's just a few pieces of wire. There shouldn't be any electronics outside apart from the antenna. Maybe protection against corrosion.

the weatherproofing is if you use a pringles can antenna, it'll need weatherproofing because the cans are semi cardboard. a tin can or similar should be fine for a couple of years.

that said, the usb adapter or router should be as close as possible to the antenna - put it inside an ip45 or similar rated box (buy a cheap pelican case and drill some holes for cables or something) to minimise ariel cable length.

Cat-5e is real cheap these days. That can go 1,000 feets i think. Why not try running a cable?