How to extend a network recieved from directional antenna?

Question

I am connected to a network across the street using a directional antenna. The antenna is hooked up directly to my computer's wireless card. Naturally, for every other device in my house the signal from this network is weak or nonexistent.

I'd like to extend the network over my house so I'm not just picking it up on my computer. I'm not sure what I need to do this. Can I just hook up the antenna to a repeater? Will that work?

Answer 1

You have a couple options available. In my opinion, the best solution would be to utilize a WISP router. A WISP router will connect to the ISP through your family's router and additionally, will rebroadcast the signal so your other devices can access it. The only time you would then need a repeater is if the signal from the WISP is weak in certain areas of your place.

I don't know your technical expertise, but you can create a homebrew WISP.

WRT54G can easily be sourced for cheap, which when set into client mode can be used as a WISP. You can also buy dedicated WISP routers.

Answer 2

Overall, there are a lot of different options for doing what you're doing, and which to choose depends on how much money you want to spend vs. how much effort you want to put in yourself to custom-build a solution. There are also performance and power-usage tradeoffs for various solutions.

Here's one quick and cheap solution: If you're fine leaving your computer and directional antenna where they are, and you're fine leaving your computer on all the time (and I mean really on and running, not in sleep/standby mode), then you could just enable your OS's version of Internet Sharing to share from the one Wi-Fi interface to another Wi-Fi interface (get ahold of a USB Wi-Fi adaptor), which you'd put in "Software AP" mode on a different channel. This is cheap in terms of new hardware costs, but comparatively expensive in terms of electricity costs. Having a full desktop PC running all the time takes much more electricity than a small energy-efficient embedded processor in an off-the-shelf "Wi-Fi Range Extender" box.