Point to point small wifi

[TechJunkie]

Hey, want to connect two friends' houses together for gaming.(Pretoria, South Africa). About 250m, apart. What WiFi standard hardware should we be looking at? 5.8 ghz 802.11a was named by someone earlier because there is too much interference on 2.4ghz. We're trying to keep it as cheap as possible but still have good speed and latency for gaming. We're thinking about using standard PCI WiFi cards and directional grid antennas. Can anyone advise, give tips, etc?

 

[DapperDanMan]

Why don't one of you connect to the PTAWUG and then the other house can link up to it? That way you could play against a lot more people, plus you could make use of the WUG's additional benefits.

See www.ptawug.co.za for details.

Otherwise you could link any two access points in bridge mode with small 2.4GHz patch antennas (grid dishes for a link distance of only 250m is overkill, and you generally don't have to worry about interference at this short distance so much that you splash out on 5GHz-6GHz equipment.)

If you are able to link between the houses from indoors (indoors = weatherproof) then you can also exchange the idea for PCMCIA cards with the idea of getting a Wi-Fi USB adaptor with external detachable antenna, because then you could get to roof/ceiling/window height with standard USB extension cables instead of buying expensive antenna cables. (Antenna cables result in signal loss, but USB cable don't.) But if you can't link from indoors - from an upper window for example - then don't bother.

Most importantly, make sure you have LOS (line of sight) from House A to House B before you buy anything.

 

[TechJunkie]

Hey D

Already on registered on wug.za.net
U on irc?
according to wugplotter we have clear LOs but there is a m0erse tree in the way, o some of the guys told me to go for a slightly larger/more powerful antenna. We are both interested in joining the WUG..
Not PCMIA cards, standard PCI slot (On motherboard...) cards... but also thought about the usb idea...

Houses are about half a block away from each other...

 

[TechJunkie]

ptaWug IRC

Hey man "D"

Not sure what your name is on IRC, but working from my pc via phone as modem and mybroadband is chewing my ass with data charges, so when you go into irc again, find BigSmoke. I'll be online until whenever..

Thanks man




--------------------
I reject your reality and substitute my own...

 

[DapperDanMan]

Nope, I'm not on IRC.

Sorry, I meant PCI but I typed PCMCIA!

Even if you go for a stronger antenna, the tree still poses a problem ESPECIALLY if the tree is close to you or close to the nearest WUG base!

Rather link up House A and House B, then join the PTAWUG at a later stage when you can link to a (new) PTAWUG base that is not in the direction of that big tree!

Or, if you can't wait for that, then join another mesh if it's viable for you.

See http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php/HowTos#Getting_started for details.

 

[protzkrog]

TechJunkie whats your node name on www.wug.za.net ? then we can look at other possibilities to connect to the WUG.
331 users connected at the moment. We played lekker CSS last night - people from Pretoria North, right through Pretoria to Centurion, as well as central JHB, Benoni and Kempton, the server sits in Irene - everyone played with pings below 40ms - was amazing