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I'm looking to get a direct connection between an office and a flat across the street. The flat will be using this as its internet connection so VPN is out of the question.

I'd like to make the connection with two antennas that I would put in the windows; there's perfect line of sight, but three layers of glass in the way. Distance is about 100 meters.

  • I'd like it to be cheap. The cheaper the better.
  • I'd like it to be fast. At least 10Mbps, although 50Mbps would be nice.
  • I'd like it to be reliable in that I wouldn't need to fiddle with the antennas every week.
  • Low latency (under 100ms) is a major plus.

Which hardware should I get to do that? Are there risks in this approach that I should be aware of?

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You are going to be looking for Point to Point Ethernet bridges. Some use regular WiFi, microwave, laser, etc. You could also use some cheap WAPs and configure them to be bridges. I like to load third party firmware when doing such things as its more configurable.

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  • Normal WAPs are just out of range for this sort of thing; I can't see the office's wireless connection from the flat. Jun 16, 2011 at 18:13
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    Get a WAP with external antennas, and upgrade the antennas. Consumer-level WAPs with satellite dishes around high-gain antennas on both ends have successfully beamed WiFi over 15miles; That's overkill, but a set of nice, high-gain directional antennas should serve your purpose. Jun 16, 2011 at 18:18
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    Upgrade to a "directional" antenna.
    – xeon
    Jun 16, 2011 at 18:21
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    Take a look at the Super Cantenna (cantenna.com). Yes, I really wanted to mention the name.
    – Chris Ting
    Jun 16, 2011 at 19:05
  • No reason why two WAPs should not work unless the glass is seriously loaded with lead or has a metallic thermal barrier. I managed about 300m using a pair of Asus wireless routers with 12db gain antennas between two offices
    – Linker3000
    Jun 16, 2011 at 19:13

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