How many hops to home?

[corbywan]

OK, this might seem like an extreme idea, but I'm not sure what else to try.

Our church rents on Sundays from the school district. We have no office or other permanent space. I work from home and have DSL. We would like to broadcast our Sunday mornings live online but the school district has a strict no non-district computers allowed on the network policy. I totally understand that having been a network admin many moons ago. I've tried suggesting ways to facilitate us getting safe access to the internet but it's all been a no go. I even asked if we could install our own totally separate line. Nope. So here is my crazy idea.

My place is about 8 blocks from where we meet. Would it be possible to put x number of routers (I don't know what x would be) in cars between the two endpoints to get a connection to the internet? Kind of a WDS type of thing? More trouble than its worth? What do you think?

 

[belvdr]

I don't know of any network admin that would try (or even think of) doing this.

You could link routers all day long, but you'll eventually run into a limit on the number of hops that packets like to travel (called Time-To-Live, TTL). Your performance is probably going to suffer throughout this though.

If you go WDS, then you're talking extending a wireless signal, and that's not going to be very fast or efficient.

Putting this together is going to be a mess. Where are you going to plug these routers in? What about heat? How will you control where you can place the routers if the spots are taken already?

Depending on your uplink speed, you may only be able to get 1 or 2 people to watch it anyway (due to speed, not content).

So, in general, this sounds like a bad idea and a waste of money. I'd go for an AirCard before trying something like this.

 

[corbywan]

As I said, it is a crazy idea. Last ditch attempt. "Scotty" like thinking because it would take a miracle.

If nothing else, it would be a fun experiment!

 

[belvdr]

As I said, it is a crazy idea. Last ditch attempt. "Scotty" like thinking because it would take a miracle.

If nothing else, it would be a fun experiment!

If it would work..

 

[corbywan]

Is there an aircard that would work in a Mac? All the ones I've seen are PC only (if we are talking about the same thing that is, aircard meaning 3G or similar cell service card?). Would it be reliable for a persistent connection like video streaming outbound to a remote server?

As for WDS, is there a maximum number of relays?

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Just did some looking and found some Mac friendly ones. Been a while since I shopped for them. I'll look into it, but it doesn't seem like it would be a reliable enough connection. Consistent 100kbps would be a must and we are on the edge of the high speed wireless world here. They just switched on the G3 on the one tower in town. Kind of a G3 island if you will.

 

[superbovine]

the easier way would be to get a 2.5 ghz antenna with a pigtail for out door use or modify a directv/dishnetwork dish. there of plenty of option on google. With line site and a modified dish you get over a mile range.

 

[corbywan]

I had thought of some kind of dish, but line of sight isn't an option.