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General discussion

wireless internet help.

Feb 16, 2005 11:06AM PST

I live out of town and this wireless company put a small tower neer me its out of my line of sight though...

but i was wondering what i can do to get the wireless.
i live in canada so thingsare perty fine like its legal to use thewireless and all.

so i was thinking i have this hill righ on the side of my house about 200-300 feet away and from there im pretty shure u can see the wireless tower they just put up (bnut its abotu 1/2 the size of a phonepoll.

so what i want to do is make my own little tower (out of some pipe and a welder i have and then hook somthing like Get a directional wifi antenna up to it.

then i would have a rubbermade contaner on the ground right beside the tower that the cable from the antenna would o into.. (but the cable is like a tv cable so then i would have to get an adaptor to cange it to a Cat5 cable then i would run about a 350 foot Cat5 cable to my house and plug it into my Dlink router (wireless) then my laptop and pc can ahve high speed net...

will this work?
i dont know much so this is probably all wrong but plz tell me how i do this..

Discussion is locked

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"Duct tape is not enough"
Feb 17, 2005 7:42AM PST
http://connect.inside-media.com/sitemap/home-made-wifi-antenna.html notes some sites about this. Homebrew antennas are very common but today many have forgotten that not all things must be obtained from the store. I'm always amazed at how Red recylced almost any cast off into a true work of art.

Since you have more than duct tape, use the internet to read up about Wifi, IF that's what they are using. You'll first have to determine what GHz they are at and what receiver and so one, but may I offer some advice?

Lighting is very unkind to such things (and people.) Don't put you or your stuff at the top of the tower. That's for the lightning rod and the cable down to the big old ground lugs. Next take extreme care that if the tower topples, it won't land on you, the house, anything you cherish or some 400KV feed line.

Best of luck,

Bob
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One other consideration (Cat5)
Feb 19, 2005 10:49AM PST

You mention a 350 foot Cat 5 run. You're pushing the limits there since Cat 5 (UTP) has a limit of 100 meters. I've seen it exceeded, but I've also spent a lot of time on an intermittent network that was pre-wired where the length of the run turned out to be excessive, causing the problem. Duct tape, however, has no such limits...

Actually coax might be a better way to go, but it all starts to cost a lot when you really trying to get cheap access, eh?

Good luck,

Al