Bridging wifi into wireless network

I live on a boat and rely mostly on wifi provided by marinas to connect to
Internet. Sometimes, I am docked far away from the wifi transmitter and the
signal received is too weak. I was told to install a system made of a high
gain antenna, a wireless ethernet bridge and a router, all those wired, and
then my computer connected wirelessly to the router. Would that work ? Do I
need something different or do I need to add something to it?
If this works, how do I know that my network that appears under "my networks"
is connected to the marina ?

brisegalets wrote:
> I live on a boat and rely mostly on wifi provided by marinas to connect to
> Internet. Sometimes, I am docked far away from the wifi transmitter and the
> signal received is too weak.

An outside rated client with an external antenna would work. I use it
often for oil patch customers out in the field.

http://deliberant.com > Products > Wireless Outdoor Radios
Bottom of the page: DLB2701 500mW Conn. Radio

http://www.highgainantennas.com/category_s/2.htm
8dB N-F Omni-Directional Antennas for 2.4GHz ISM/WLAN
and 3 Foot N-Male to N-Male cable from the Coax Cable page.

Don't use anymore higher gain antenna as any rocking of the boat would
move the beam too far above or below the horizon.

Mount everything as high up as you can go and use an outdoor rated
ethernet cable for signal and power. Inside, connect it directly to your
computer. If you have more than one computer, connect the cable to a
simple router and connect your computers to the router. You could even
use a wireless router, just make sure its on a different channel than
the outdoor client.

On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:12:14 GMT, "brisegalets" <u38918@uwe> wrote in
<7af4c57f7049a@uwe>:

>I live on a boat and rely mostly on wifi provided by marinas to connect to
>Internet. Sometimes, I am docked far away from the wifi transmitter and the
>signal received is too weak. I was told to install a system made of a high
>gain antenna, a wireless ethernet bridge and a router, all those wired, and
>then my computer connected wirelessly to the router. Would that work ? Do I
>need something different or do I need to add something to it?
>If this works, how do I know that my network that appears under "my networks"
>is connected to the marina ?

See the Wi-Fi on a Boat page in the wiki below.

--
Best regards, FAQ for Wireless Internet: <http://Wireless.wikia.com>
John Navas FAQ for Wi-Fi: <http://wireless.wikia.com/wiki/Wi-Fi>
Wi-Fi How To: <http://wireless.wikia.com/wiki/Wi-Fi_HowTo>
Fixes to Wi-Fi Problems: <http://wireless.wikia.com/wiki/Wi-Fi_Fixes>

"brisegalets" <u38918@uwe> hath wroth:

>I live on a boat and rely mostly on wifi provided by marinas to connect to
>Internet. Sometimes, I am docked far away from the wifi transmitter and the
>signal received is too weak. I was told to install a system made of a high
>gain antenna, a wireless ethernet bridge and a router, all those wired, and
>then my computer connected wirelessly to the router. Would that work ? Do I
>need something different or do I need to add something to it?
>If this works, how do I know that my network that appears under "my networks"
>is connected to the marina ?

Wi-Fi on a boat:
<http://wireless.wikia.com/wiki/Wi-Fi_on_a_Boat>

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

John Navas wrote:
>>I live on a boat and rely mostly on wifi provided by marinas to connect to
>>Internet. Sometimes, I am docked far away from the wifi transmitter and the
>[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>>If this works, how do I know that my network that appears under "my networks"
>>is connected to the marina ?
>
>See the Wi-Fi on a Boat page in the wiki below.
>Wifi on a boat,

After seeking help here and reading as much as I could, I still need help. I
know next to nothing as far as networking is concerned and I need guidance
expressed in layman's words (I know, without fully understanding them what IP
address, MAC address, DHCP, and a few other highly technical words mean) so
that I can connect to the internet.
My set up is as follows:
1. Hardware : On a trawler, above the wheel house an antenna (I don't have
the specs, but I know that the owner of the boat got it for 100 dollars from
someone who claimed to be an expert). The antenna is connected via coax cable
with a TNC connector to a Wireless G Bridge (WET54G). The bridge is connected
via a regular ethernet cable to the port called "Internet" of a wireless G
router (WRT54GS). The router is connected wirelessly to 2 toshiba satellite
laptops, one with Windows XP, the other one with Windows Vista home basic.
2. Software : Since I am very much novice, I refrained from tampering too
much with the default settings. I set up both the bridge and the router on
channel 6 (actually the bridge does not give me an option), I have disabled
security and kept broadcasting of SSID on.

The only progress I have made so far is that I am now able to see the setup
pages of both the bridge and the router on the computer, but I cannot go
beyond the bridge. The default setting for both is that IP addresses are set
automatically.
Reading the various articles on Wireless Wiki, I have many unanswered
question.
Should I go from automatic configuration DCHP to static IP (or something else)
, if yes what IP address should I assign, what is MTU, should I connect the
bridge to a port marked computer 1, 2 3 or 4 instead of the port marked
internet, should I use in that case a crossover cable, etc . . . .

I don't know if this is the right place to ask all those questions, but I
have been on this thing almost full time for a week and I am getting quite
distressed.

Bernard Lefevre

--
Message posted via HWKB.com
http://www.hwkb.com/Uwe/Forums.aspx/...eless/200711/1