Long range wifi hardware

[ImANiNja]

Hey Guys

I want to establish a wifi link between me and my mate, he's not more than 1km from me.

What hardware is needed?
Will it be expensive?
Will it be hard to setup?
Only hardware i have so far is a netgear DG834G wireless router.

We work together and if we could get a not too expensive connection between us will help a lot. Any advice will help thanks.

 

[lowracer]

You will need decent equipment and antennas

just have a look at the Wireless user groups, the hardware requirements, wug starter kits, etc.

Bearing in mind that once the two of you are connected, chances are of other people will be wanting to connect as well.

 

[WiZard]

You have to have "line of sight" between you and your mate, no buildings or trees in between (this may require raising the antenna above roof level on one or both sides).
The tiny omni-directional antenna on the netgear is really not suited to the task, you should probably get parabolic grid antennas.

Also, as lowracer stated, you may have some other mates that will want to join you later, keep this in mind when choosing the equipment.

You may consider the RouterBoard SXT as a very neat and simple solution.

Please feel free to contact the wireless users groups for any advice via IRC, details can be found on wug.za.net.
(a word of advice on IRC, people aren't necessarily at their PCs even though they are logged in, so be patient, post you problem and WAIT, at least an hour,
also some may be sarcastic, or annoying, just ignore them, somebody else is bound to help)

 

[ImANiNja]

Thanks for the info so far guys, the RouterBoard SXT will me and him need one? and will that be the only hardware needed?
Thanks for the help so far.

 

[WiZard]

Replied in PM

 

[Tanka]

Nice simple setup would be 2 x SXT.
Just make sure you get nice long lan cable to mount it on the roof
RouterBOARD SXT 5GHz 11n 16dBi CPE
The power will come through the LAN cable thanks to POE. Make sure you can see your friends house from where you mount it. Any hill or even trees will likely make a link impossible.
Using the mikrotik ROS might be a bit complicated at first but they do have a nice wiki.