'lo all.

Had a question concerning Setting up two Directional Wireless APs/Bridges/Routers.

Essentially, I'm at the purchasing stage right now for the above system.

To better understand my situation, I'm one of those Sprint Broadband Direct customers who are soon going to be out of an internet connection.

I'd really rather not have to get AT&T Mobile Broadband, Sprint/Alltell/Cricket EV-DO, and god forbid Hughesnet and WildBlue.

Sprint did its job, gave me no bandwidth caps, and generally no problems.

So, I found out about Unwired BroadBand, who use a fixed wireless network that goes back to high-speed landlines in nearby areas. I also liked the fact that they were local. Update: The radios they use are 802.11a long distance radios, set on the 5.796Ghz. They said as long as I was 20mhz off from their frequency, I would be fine.

I had them come out and test... and then even a second time (They left their ladder, funny enough, so I held it hostage). What we discovered though is that the trees at my grandparent's ranch just down the street are blocking their radios.

So on the second test, I had them test the back corner of the workshop at my grandparent's ranch, and standing on top they can clearly see the smokestacks that the radio is on.

So, solution? Set up the ISP's radio dish on the roof of the workshop, then have a directional wireless AP/bridge/whatever transmit back to our place. Naturally, we'll need one to transmit back to that AP/bridge/whatever.

To make this as easy as possible to visualize, I made a google map noting the locations of everything.

Handy Wireless Map

I'd suggest clicking the Satelitte button on the upper right, zooming into the second-highest tick on the zoom slider, and then clicking the "House" link on the left.

(For those worried about my saftey of giving out such a detailed idea of my living location, don't. I keep a loaded sawed off shotgun under my computer, and several other loaded weapons around the house.)

Now, the Blue line I drew represents if I had the dish from a 10' metal stand on the top of my roof, directly pointed towards the ISP's AP on the smokestacks. As you can see, just down the street, it runs into some really thick, tall trees with heavy foilage, which blocks the connection, and when it is working, I get about 96-99ms lag time (They only install at a max of 75ms lag time abouts)

The Maroon/Brown line I drew represents if I had a dish from a 10' metal stand on the back-right corner of the workshop.

The Red line I drew represents, generally speaking, about the Line of Sight that both of the theoretical APs/Bridges/Routers that I would setup would have.

So as you see, the distance between the workshop and the backend second-story deck on the house is about 800ft, so I'm guessing I'd want to have something that'd transmit and recieve somewhere around 1000ft, give or take, in the event of any weather conditions that might crop up, right? I have a perfectly clear Line of Sight between the two areas.

What I'm looking for is recommendations on equipment and setup. I'm not opposed to spending some money... some, being up to ~$400, if that gets me a good quality connection across that area. I'm not overtly opposed to DIY projects either of modifying normal routers or the like. My main concern is to get a good, strong, relatively faultless connection with almost no packetloss from AP-to-AP (Naturally there will be packetloss from the ISP's radio).

For DIY solutions, a bonus would be utilizing a router that can I can flash Tomato.

Apologies ahead of time if I missed a post that talked about absolutely what I'm asking.

Thanks all for any help given.

(Just a note, was originally posted at dslreports.com)