wireless networking?

[brian_dean20]

can anyone tell me if they are any differences between a lan card and a wireless lan card, offcouse a wireless card does not have any wires but are they any other differences,

the reason why i ask is,,, my friends and i want to set up a local network in our city to play video games with eachother, basically there are 16 of us, our houses are scarted around in something like a 1 square kilometer radus.

Can anyone tell me what would be the cost of setting up such a small network (in terms of users) yet big ( in terms of distance) network.

 

Next, i have setup networks with lan cards in the past and it has worked out just fine for me, does this mean that i will be able to setup a wireless network as well, or does setting up a wireless network need a whole new knowledge base altogether?

[Klaynos]

Yes you will be able to settup a wireless network.

 

But to cover that range you'd need alot of repeaters, which will be costly and require placement.

 

Your best bet is a VPN across the internet.

 

Or do you require anything more than a decent internet connection would give you?

[brian_dean20]

nope a vpn just won't cut it for us, firstly we dont have boardband internet in this town, all we have is dial-up or wireless telephone dialup, but that too only goes as fast as 128kbps, so basically the only option i have is to go wireless,

this is what i through of, i would buy 12`16 (give or take a few) of Netgear WGR614 Wireless Router, each has an out door range of 300 meters, this wireless router costs about 39$ each,, so thats something like $625, say another $15 for the network card itself,,, basically i am assuming that its going to come do the $50 per head, thats not bad provided that we could atleast have speeds of up to 2mbps, this router has a 56mbps speed but even 2 mbps would do just fine, now what am i missing out here?

 

well come to think about it i have heard that ppl can take a normal cable tv cable, buy a thingy and convert one of the channels for internet usage, and since we have the same cable tv provider, i am pritty sure that they would aggree to let us use their cable for a monthly fee, but having said that i have no idea as to how to go about that, i also wonder if it is posible for uses to setup something like this?

[insane_alien]

you might get away with directional antennas and a central router, might be worth getting a high bandwidth one. for this to work you will need line of sight for the more distant users. speeds might not be great and packets will drop. a high speed connection to the net is likely to be the better choice.

[Klaynos]

Rememebr the 300m will be GREATLY reduced in a city... Directional areams will help, there are alot of links online about building them.

[Realitycheck]

Call up DirectTV or any other of the satellite TV companies that offer internet for $50 a month.

[JohnF]

Have a read of this article...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/6646469.stm

...scroll down to "Tin cantenna" where you will find a possible solution to the distance with standard equipment.