wireless lan capabilities: speed, distance, price?

[YaRness]

basically my situation is this: our office is still on a bloody 56k dial up. the cable company wants more than just us asking for cable to lay a line (no one else in the complex seems to want cable :mad: ), or $4Gs to lay the line with just us (unnacceptable).

i've got this wild, and highly improbable idea, that maybe we could run through a wireless lan to somewhere else (like my cable connection a mile or so away, or a nearby business) and pipe to the net through that. it's prolly a shot in the dark cost and capability wise, but i'm having little luck finding a good article or current state-of-the-onion on what's available in terms of speed, price, and distance between nodes currently. so if someone can point a finger in the right direction i would be utterly grateful.

[DMR]

YaR,

If I were you I'd be more interested in checking out the "state-of-the-onion" concerning the ease of hacking into, or piggybacking onto, wireless networks. I just don't think I'd feel very secure about my network if it were wireless. Not in my area (San Francisco) anyway.
;)

[Helical Cynic]

I think, if you really want to piggyback off your home connection *and* you have line-of-sight between work and home, you could get a super-good directional antenna (there's some of these that, given line of sight, will give you at least 1-2 Mb/s at 1 mile or so), and use a VPN for security (sorry I can't be of more assistance here). Other than that you may want to check out DSL...

[YaRness]

well it looks like we might do 2way satellite.

600 bucks down and 70 a month ain't too bad for 400kbps down and 128 up. also 20 hours a month of included dial-in access ($1 per hour after that not to exceed 21.95 in a month). this is with earthlink.

[ph34r]

We use wireless for a few classrooms and labs where the exisiting infrastructure is too loaded to add more jacks (no $$ for new switches, etc.). It is slow (11mb shared), expensive ($150 for a wireless pci card, $750 for a bridge that allows 8 comps to connect to a hub and then the wireless beyond that, $2000 for a access point). But that's only lan stuff. Oh, and 300 feet with no obstructions from one antenna to the wireless access point.

We're using cisco/aironet stuff btw - expensive, but its the best.

For getting more speed to your business, I'd pressure for cable, or look into isdn, switched 56, dsl, or a fractional t line.

[ 08 November 2001: Message edited by: ph34r ]