Long range home wifi

Im looking for the cheapest way to cover most my yard just under 100 acres I want to be able to get most the guest houses the pool stuff like the fire pit, and shop so it would be nice if i could cover 50% of it. Part of the yard is empty where we put old cars and stuff like that.
any Ideas for the cheapest solution? I need all this for us and friends laptops so we can play online games and stuff at any place in the yard without re-setting up the old WRT54GS every time.

 

I'm shooting for 80% but if i can get 50% I will be happy

 

The cheapest way might be to bury a 10/100 wire out to the middle of the back yard and run a 802.11n network out there. Of course you'd have to put the router into a weather proof box or something. Dimensions of the yard might be useful as well.

 

Even a wireless-N router in the middle of your yard wouldn't cover the whole thing, I would think. You'll have to use several range extenders spaced from a wireless-N router, but that will be costly.

 

The utilities are already in the center of the area I need to cover, and i got next to no experience with wireless N, what kind of range will i get if it had external antennas in a weatherproof box about 25 feet in the air.
im guessing the area i need to cover is a mile square, or very close to square.

 

is there line of sight between the router and the guest houses etc?

Maybe you could get one of these things, (but not necessarily from there, just some ideas).

 

yes if it is raised 25+ feet than you can see almost everywhere I need to cover.

wireless N is rated for 250 meters roughly 800ft. is that a guess or tested? Will i gain much with long-range antennas?

 

What would be nice if i could get something the speed and range of aircards

 

another thought , does anyone know if WIMAX is a good idea

 

No no... If you are talking personal networking and internet, then WiMAX is not your answer. WiMAX supposed to be commercialized (internet) service. It doesn't come with small wireless router/access point as WiFi does. It uses base stations similar to current mobile networks instead.

 

You can get wireless extenders and place them around the router approximately 50-100M /150-300 feet around your routers to get you wireless signal everywhere you want. Each wirelses extender can probably cover 150-300feet radius circles thus they have pretty good range especially in open areas. You can "chain" the extender together to cover 100% of your yard easily.

 

I should be getting some 5dB antenna's that can replace the 1 or 2dB antenna's that come with WLAN routers
Will be doing a review on how they perform.
Hopefully this will be done next week.

I should also hopefully get an 11n Access Point with the RA2880 chipset.
This unit can also take the high output miniPCI cards.
Not sure when I'll be getting this as it will be one of the first released
This is a AP I've been looking foward to for sometime as you can setup 8xSSID's on this per channel so very handy for setting up various security levels like you may have in a multihouse/motel setup etc

These might be of interest for your setup.

 

If your going to spend all the money to run multiple repeaters then I would just get this and a larger omni-directional antenna.