This is going to be kind of wordy and probably not very well explained, so let me please apologize in advance.
In fact if you want you could probably just skip on down to the bottom and get right to the point.

Ok heres the situation:
I live in the Pacific Northwest on one of the San Juan Islands.
The only internet available to us out here is dial-up.
No broadband, no DSL. Nothing...

I currently have a dial-up and the best connection I can get is 26.4kbps (due to distance from the CO), which is killing me.
There's a wireless internet company across the bay that can beam me a wireless internet signal, but the install is $450 and $99 a month US.
Thats a little spendy...

Now, theres a guy down the hill from me who signed up for their service and is recieving this signal, and piping it into a boosted Apple Airport up on top of a phone pole. He then lets his neighbors who can recieve the signal use it and they then split the cost of the $99 bucks a month.
He said I could jump on the bandwagon if I could get the signal.

Unfortunately, with the wireless card in my PC I get nothing.
I live about 300 feet up on the side of a mountain, and he's down at about sea level no more than 3-400 feet from me.
My question is, is there any sort of device or apparatus, I can get to maybe improve my chances of recieving his signal?
A directional antenna I can put up on the roof or something?
Or am I doomed to have to wait a couple of years for DSL to get here?
I currently have a little linksys wireless network in the house between my 2 PC's and my Tivo.

Other than this little issue I love living here.

Heres a pretty picture from my backyard for having the patience to get to the end of my babbling diatribe.

You could get a directional antenna and put it outside then you would have to get a pcmcia card for the laptop that you could hook the external antenna to.

Have you tried to pick the signal up from outside the house ?

Yes, as Matt asked, the real question is if you can get signal from your roof easily enough. Do you have any sort of line of sight on the boosted AP? If you can't get signal on your roof, you'll need to invesitgate directional antennas.

Once you've devised a way to get the signal, what you need is something to relay the signal. One way to do this is to buy a repeater or get a wireless card with an antenna input, but that's not what I'd reccomend.

Instead, go buy yourself a AP Client and a good AP/router. (WRT54g is probably the best choice these days for access points). Plug your laptop into the ap client, get it set up and connected to his wireless network, and then plug that cable into the WAN port of your router, and configure it normally.

Now you've got a nice way to connect and your wired/wireless computers, and it should be fairly reliable and keep your computers secure from everyone else he's sharing with. You can investigate outdoor housings and power over ethernet if you need to move your AP client outside to get a signal.

Matthew

Currently, I'm getting wireless internet exactly the way you envision it. It can work. You pretty much just need the antenna and a router.

What I've got is basically a little wireframe antenna, on a pole on the roof, connected to a special piece of super-thick low-loss antenna cable, that connects to a homebrew wireless router. The homebrew wireless router is actually an Orinoco PCMCIA card with an external antenna jack, pigtailed to the thick antenna cable. That card is plugged into a little single-board 386 computer running a customized Debian that boots off of a flash card. That board-computer is the router. It was all designed, built, and programmed by my ISP.

You could probably accomplish exactly the same thing with an off-the-shelf wireless router and an external antenna.

BUT... Before you do it... Consider these points:

1. Reselling his bandwidth to downstream customers, your neighbor is probably breaking his contractual agreement with the service provider. So you could both get in trouble for doing it if you get caught.

2. I'm getting my service for less than half the price your neighbor is paying, and I'm doing it legally. I think he's being robbed, and you guys should confront the ISP about it.

3. Your neighbor might not be getting the full 11-megabit bandwidth. He might be getting a subset of that bandwidth. In which case, you guys will be fighting over the available space any time you're on the line together. This might not be a big deal for you guys, but you should check into exactly how much bandwidth that $99.00 is getting him.

4. Your in-home wireless network will interfere with the uplink to his wireless network, unless you're careful about configuring the routers.

5. Your directional antenna, at your end only, might be enough. But if it's not, then he'll have to set up a similar antenna at his end. This gets tricky.

I havent checked to see if I can get the signal from the roof.
No laptop.

My neighbor is distributing his signal with blessings from the ISP, so thats not an issue.

Where and what kind of directional antennas are available?
Are they expensive?

I'm still kind of hazy on what I need to do with the coax from the antenna.
Say I get my hands on a crappy old laptop and I can get a signal from my roof with a directional antenna. I then pipe the coax into the old laptop somehow?
And it needs to be running what?
Then from the old laptop into my Linksys 802.11B router? Or do I need another kind of router.
I also happen to have an old Cisco Catalyst switch lying around, would throwing that into the mix somewhere help maybe?
I'm pretty computer savvy, but this kind of wireless networking is a little beyond me. And I've been out of the tech loop for about two and half years now.

Sorry to ask you guys to dumb this down for me.

So far it looks like with a little work and some know-how this could be doable though.

You can always try this .

$6.45



-jk

Holy smokes! Your right.
I took the antenna off and it is just a coax plug. Had no idea...

Maybe one of these antennas would work?
Not sure what DB range I would need though.
I'm thinking maybe 15 or 19db?

Those antennas look good. Make sure you understand the difference between an access point ("AP") and access point client ("AP Client"). What you've got now probably isn't enough, but buying an AP Client that will take those antennas should probably get you there in terms of gear. There's definitly no need to venture into the realm of custom debian installs on 386 SBC's to do it these days.

Matthew

Keep an eye on this Qwest disclosure spreadsheet to see if any DSLAMs loading on the ferry to the San Juans. I just looked at it, though, and see zilch for San Juan County.

There is a bandit wireless outfit providing service to marinas in Friday and Roche Harbors, maybe elsewhere. Couldn't be certain of your island from the pic or whether that would help. Their quality of service is mixed. Find them here.

And maybe somebody else linked Seattle Wireless' FAQ.
It might have some relevant info. and they used to have good DIY antenna info.

I would just go up there with the laptop and see if you can connect that way first. If you can get it that way than putting an antenna up there would work for sure.

Ahh sorry I though you had a laptop for some reason.