Austad, Jay wrote: > Well range isn't that big of an issue. It's line of sight. A 40 foot mast > is about $70, which should get you above the trees in most areas. Using a > 24db dish ($130), you can do about 23 miles with no amplifiers. It's not _quite_ that simple. You need LOS plus something called fresnel-zone clearance. There's a fresnel zone calculator at: http://www.ydi.com/fresnel-zone.php Putting a 24dB dish ontop of a $70 tower is not going to work too well after a storm or two. (Re-)aligning it is kind of a challenge too. All of this work gives you one end of a point-to-point link. If you're pointing at a central site, along with many others, you're going to see throughput degrade because of hidden-node problems (where two leaf-node transmitters stomp on each other because they can't hear that someone else is transmitting.) You can lower the RTS/CTS threshold which will help, at the expense of latency. Remember also that at these distances, 802.11b is going to be running at 1 or 2 Mbits. > You might run into zoning problems with an antenna that tall though. That's > why I'm going to get my ham radio license this weekend. The FCC license > overrides local ordinances on antenna height. :) Glad to see you get licenced. Let me prematurely welcome you to amateur radio - I'm N0REN aka G1XRL (in a previous life.) Anyway, let's start collecting approximate locations, so we can see what we have to deal with. -- andyw at pobox.com Andy Warner Voice: (612) 801-8549 Fax: (208) 575-5634