What kind of range can I expect with a directional WiFi ante

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nna?

I am working for a month from my grandpa's house (I'm watching his dog while he's on vacation) right on the beautiful northern California coast. It's great having a quieter place to work than the office, but the problem is that he has a satellite internet connection. My source control is exposed over HTTP, which works fine, but for remote debugging and administration (which I need to do over a VPN) this connection is pretty much unusable due to the extremely high latency.

There is a hotel about a mile down the road with a T1 line. I have been going and eating lunch whenever I require a fast connection, but I would prefer to be able to use it without leaving home. I have a direct line of sight to the hotel, which is much less than a mile (since the coast is really curvy). I would estimate the gap at about 1000 yards (I can watch the hotel guests stuff their faces through a pair of 10 x 50 binoculars).

Do you think I could pick up their WiFi with a good directional antenna? I can have one here in 2 days with my amazon prime, but I need to know if I can expect a reasonably stable connection before I go dropping $150 on an antenna and a new wireless card.

Thanks

make a cantenna(search on hack-a-day or google) and try out the range, as i understand it they work almost as well as their comercial counterparts.

all ti really takes is a wifi card with an external antenna, a matching connector, a can of pringles or similar metallic coated cardboard,

if there is no conector in the other end of your cable you can simply strip the wire and insert it instead of using the connectors depicted in most guides.

look up a guide as there is a simple calculation as to the optimal placement of the wire in relation to the bottom of the can, for a pringles can it is around 1.5 inches as i remember.[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVjN9EK7B0E[/youtube]

edit there you go.

I need to know what kind of range I can expect before I go buying a wireless card with an external antenna.

I will say this do not guess the range use google earth to measure the line of sight. And make sure there is nothing blocking the wfi at the place like a copper wall or something.

there are consistent reports of half a mile being possible with a well built cantenna, since you can buy highly efficient amplifying cantennas retail i would say they can safely reach beyond the mile range(these use active amplification)
price wise i think that will be the cheapest solution for 1km but as said above a measrued range and a google search for that and cantenna should show if others have tried similar ranges.

most of those are homebuilt.

i have made one out of a coke can extending my bothers conection from his lodge in the yard to the house around 150 yards, reason i didnt bring it up is the vast range difference and as such bear little relevance.
that one cost about 20 dollars in reusable materials, using an old pcmia wifi card.

Looks like it's more like 1.5 km.

i found this forum where they are disussing a 2.5 km link, it seems possible but i just skimmed it.
2.5 KM link

Skimmed that link, looks like they have two directional antennas pointed at each other. I would only have one directional antenna (the router at the hotel would still be an omni).

I'll probably just make do with the slow connection, don't want to risk it.

that is the safest and cheapest bet.

1.5 km is pretty far for standard wifi routers.

Wifi connections can go as far as 100km.... Its about the line of sight, and quality of equipment. The best router would be 2x nanostation 5m. My OH is a wireless nut and spends his spare time on roofs and up trees setting up wireless links all over the place, so has heaps of experience.- I asked for his answer to your post