Long Range Wireless Networking
Updated for 2007
In the spring of 2003 broadband Internet finally arrived to Ringo Lake.
With three households located on the family farm, sharing a connection seemed like a reasonable idea, so I started investigating what would be required.
The first obstacle was how to span the 1/3 mile between the broadband connection at my house and the farm site where the other users are, with radios that normally only reach 300 feet.
From my experience as a ham radio operator, I knew that if I were to use the right antennas I could focus the signal and extend it's range.
After some research on the Internet, I discovered it was a common practice and I found where to get the equipment at a reasonable price. 		Since then, the system has been in operation for over four years and we've learned a lot.
In 2005 I switched from telephone based DSL to wireless broadband from Clearwire. This doubled my download speed to 1.5 Mb and eliminated the need for a telephone line since we all have cell phones too.
The downside is our upload speed is limited to 256 Kb, which hasn't been a problem so far.
In 2006 we upgraded the WiFi network to the newer 802.11g protocol which increased network throughput by a factor of 10x.
It's backward compatible with the older 802.11b protocol, so older equipment like our wireless camera and PDA still work with the network.
Another nice surprise was, like computers, WiFi equipment gets better and cheaper at the same time.
The bridge path of about 1/3 mile looking from source to destination.
Yes, thats a deer in my yard.		 The same path in reverse. Notice we've trimmed the trees out of the way to minimize interference.
This is where the show starts - The Clearwire modem.
It brings broadband Internet to my house from a tower about 5 miles away. It's connected to my router which channels the data to it's destination.
Connections to the farm employ the wireless bridge. 		The bridge consists of two DWL-2100 radios, each connected to a outdoor, high gain antenna. Above is one of the two Vyagi antennas which is aimed at the other antenna at the farm.
This greatly increases the signal and is essential for a long range WiFi bridge.
The cabinet at the farm end holds two DWL-2100 multi-purpose radios connected with a CAT5 cable.
One acts as the far end of the wireless bridge and the other is configured as an access point.		 The farm Vyagi antenna is aimed at it's mate on my house.
Custom low loss 25' WiFi coaxial cables from FAB connect the radios to the outdoor antennas.
In order to make the 1/3 mile trip, the signal gets plenty of help on each end from 16 dbi gain Vyagi antennas like this one, made by Pacific Wireless. The purpose of this antenna is to focus the radio signal into a narrow, 30 degree cone, much like a flashlight beam. The access point uses this sector antenna with 120 degree coverage and 13 dbi of gain to provide a strong signal to the users.
The network uses three of these D-Link DWL-2100 multi purpose radios. Two span the 1/3 mile bridge path and the third is configured as an access point. Two of the end users are using DWL-520 WiFi PCI cards with good results.

My equipment sources were:

www.newegg.com the D-Link Equipment

www.fab-corp.com for the coax and antenna assemblies

Back to main page

This page was updated 2-9-08