Bridging two LANs (wirelessly?)

[BattleToad]

Question similar to this thread.

Tonight I am moving to a new house, just so happens that my best friend lives 5 houses down the street. Me and him do a lot of computer stuff together, host decent size LANs (15-20 people) at our homes, etc. Now that we are much closer, we are looking to bridge our networks together, and are hoping to do it hands on DIY rather than buying stuff to do it.

I've been googling around, found a few things. I think that the best approach is going to be wirelessly, being that we cant run cable along the road (1. cant screw in the city Right of Way 2. distance is a bit to far for straight run ethernet (around 500 ft direct run, and we would have to run it along back fences which would be about 600-700 ft) and we have noway of putting a swith or router in between to give the signal a boost). I'm found some DIY wireless antennas, like this pringles can one, and that is exactly the kind of thing we are looking for, a nice new project that we can use to connect our two LANs.

We both have the same ISP (Cox Communications) with a 5 mbps down/2 mbps up cable line. So we each would have our own connect. I have a Linksys WRT54GS Router connected to my Toshiba Cable modem, he has a DLINK Wireless G Router with a 4 Port 10/100 switch (not sure the exact model number). The line of sight between the two houses is uninterupted, no powerlines, trees, bushes etc, and the location of his router is on the exterior wall of his house facing my house.

Our plan is to build antennas to mount on either both or one of our roofs (depending on what we need) to send and recieve data back and forth, so that we will all be connected, be able to transfer files on LAN speed, be able to see each other's computer on our network, etc.

All of the computer on the network will be running Win XP pro.

What do you guys suggest as the best way to do this? Will the pringles can approach work for what we need, will one of the routers just have to be the dominant router and dish out all the IPs to each computer at both houses, or is there a way to use both routers, have each one give IP's at each respective house, and still be connected at LAN speed? Does what I'm saying make any sense to anyone but myself?

[sharder8]

What's the actual distance between the two houses?

I set up a wireless bridge in my home network and wasn't able to find a good way of doing it without some research and trial and error.

What is now working great is using a min. of 2 Wireless Access Points. One connected into each switch. (I've broken my network into 3 Lan's, bridged with 3 WAP's using Point to Multi-Point.) I haven't had a way of checking my range . . . but supposedly, I should be able to reach out pretty well.

I'm also looking into adding my Bro's network into mine, and he's ~ 4 blocks away. I'm going to try to work out a deal with a friend of mine, who designs and builds his own antenna's.

Harder

[kwebb]

A much better and easier method would be to just setup a VPN server on one side. Use your existing connection to tunnel via your ISP

[sharder8]

A much better and easier method would be to just setup a VPN server on one side. Use your existing connection to tunnel via your ISP

In my case, my Bro would be dropping his DSL and Qwest telephone service. He hates Qwest and the only reason he currently is using it, is for the internet.

And yes, I've talked to Qwest and they don't have a problem with him connecting via my network. (Probably because they don't think it can be done! )

On a side note, Qwest told me that I couldn't use a 2Wire HomePortal modem, as according to them, it wouldn't work with their service. They have now learned that it does and will, because I've sent their modem back to them.

Harder

[BattleToad]

What's the actual distance between the two houses?

About 500 feet.