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Poster:	steffenyount	Date:	Jan 3, 2005 7:35am
Forum:	sflan	Subject:	Re: sflan from berkeley?

Your best bet is to first search for hotspots near your harbor:
Running some kind of wireless network detection program (like netstumbler) on your laptop, walk the perimeter of your harbor and see if any nearby hotspots are detected.

If you can't find a hotspot you can make your own. Starting from scratch: the most convienient route is probably to get one of the www.2wire.com highpowered 802.11b Dsl modems installed through a nearby phone line (I recommend getting the high powered 200mW(23dBm) 802.11b unit, Dsl is much slower than 802.11b anyways, and you'll need the signal strength for going the distance). I think SBC/Yahoo provides these boxes as an option with "home" service. Maybe you can split the cost with other boat owners and/or use the harbormaster's building as a base for your DSL connection. If you have to setup your own hotspot you might as well inquire in your harbor about setup possibilities.

Once you get your hotspot source worked out you can get your own setup going by doing one of two things:

1) Connect directly from your laptop using an external antenna. (you'll need to ensure that you pick an antenna with suitable gain and a reasonable beam width to allow for the rocking of your boat and the tides also you'll probably want to get an external antenna compatible wireless card that uses a more powerful 200mW(23dBm) radio e.g. http://www.hautespot.net/store/products.asp?cat=45 ).

alternatively you could:

2) Mount and Setup a repeater near your boat and use your already existing wireless network card. (e.g. you may be able to mount this repeater on a lampost or the dockbox near your slip.) This repeater should probably use a directional antenna to connect to your hotspot (e.g. http://www.pacwireless.com/products/RT24-14.shtml ), and the repeater can probably use an omni antenna to connect to any generic wireless network card found in your laptop. For an example of a two radio repeater box see: http://www.hautespot.net/store/proddetail.asp?prod=HR%2D2611DX2&cat=21 .

I'm not endorsing any of the above mentioned products or vendors. Shop around and do your homework....

Good luck,
-Steffen