wireless newbie: Will this gear work?

Hi all,
I'm a newcomer to the wireless bandwagon and I'm still getting my head around the technology. Second semester I'll be studying an Allied Telesyn paper on wireless technologies so hopefully that should be all good

Anyway, long story short, Telecom has rooted my phoneline, and subsequently DSL has not worked for a month and a half (If you want to know the whole story just ask, I'll happily vent about it). Dial up is horrid (flat of 4 geeks) and I refuse tooth and nail to sign up with those halfwit morons at Telstra. So currently I'm looking at NZWireless.co.nz I dont know what you guys think of them, but the few people I've talked to on their service seem to like it.

It appears to cost $78 incl gst per month, and offers 256k international and xmbit national (dependant on what your hardware connects at I would assume) with no data caps, which to me is far more appealing than cable. Their site is a little vague but I'm keeping in communication with them with plenty of questions. So far it appears their AP is a tad over 6km's from my place by road (according to wises.co.nz), so I'd estimate 6.5-7km directly (I didnt pay attention to soh-cah-toa in school as I thought it was useless... oh the irony)

The main hurdle is the setup cost.

I have no problem chopping together an antenna, I'm looking at doing a satenna, and judging by what I've read here I'll look around for a couple of liquorice allsorts cans from te warewhare.

Then integrating it with my current network setup - where we are protected by a smoothwall box, which at present does not support wireless cards, so I was wondering whether a bridge device would do?
eg

Antenna <-> Bridge Device <-> Smoothwall <-> Internal Network

So the big question I really want to ask is this:
Is a D-Link DWL-810+ (as per here) suitable for connecting a satenna or 19dbi parabolic grid antenna to my wired network?

/edit. yes I'm aware that modification of the device is required, and again will have no problems in doing so.

I have selected this product due to its price (cheapest name brand I could find) and featureset (funnily it claims the highest encryption capability - compared to a $450 3com bridge which only does 128bit)

Do any of you guys have experience with this Bridge and have any subsequent comments?
Do any of you have any reservations about this kind of setup?
Do any of you have any alternative (cheaper/better) suggestions?
Do any of you have any advice for such an endeavour?

The only problem I can think of now is authentication, but I'll run that by the nzw.co.nz guys during my next email to them. I'm just curious if my newbness is missing something...

If you have any queries about my situation to help clarify, then I'll gladly answer any questions you may have

TIA

I currently have a Borg Waveguide connected to a Dlink 900+ AP, which is
connected to the DMZ interface on my smoothwall (ver 1.3) firewall.

This setup allows anon users of my AP to gain internet access through
my Nokia DSL router, without being able to access my internal private
network. I also have another box on the DMZ which provides FTP services.

I am looking to move to the 1.4beta of smoothwall due to native support
for a "wireless" interface. ie 4 ethernet interfaces, internal, external, dmz
and wireless.

I would sugggest using a standard AP with an ethernet port as opposed to
a bridge device like the 810 (IE my 900+ will work in bridge mode if necessary
but will also work in AP mode, Client mode, Point to multipoint etc.
This will give you greater flexability if nothing else.....

__________________
Steve M
Bigted
Cute, Furry and Cuddly

why are you using beta versions of smoothwall 1, when smoothwall 2 final is out?

Sorry - Sorry.
A slip of the tounge.

I am using IPCOP not Smoothwall.
Sorry for the confusion.

__________________
Steve M
Bigted
Cute, Furry and Cuddly

Ok, well I should confess that I had purchased the bridge previous to posting here but that's nothing now..

I have been playing around a lot with a 19dBi antenna that I picked up from nzwireless.co.nz, about 5metres of DSE RG213 (will replace with lmr400 in due course) and this bridge.

I am linking to Somes Island now, instead of across the Hutt Valley.. this shortens the link distance by about one kilometre.

This bridge is a 30/50mW (15dB-17d unit, so is probably a little borderline for the role considering the length of cable, distance to cover, fresnel etc and unlike initially thought it needs no modification - it has a removable antenna revealing an RP-SMA connector, which a readily available pigtail (DSE - $26 *cough*$7 matesrates*cough*) connects to

It all appears to work fine now.. save for the fact that the AP on Somes was struck by lightning, so internet access is a bit sporadic... That and the antenna isn't completely tuned in yet, so some more time on the roof with a laptop is in the cards...

Other changes I'm considering:
*Replace the cable with LMR400
*Consider a more powerful bridge or a DSE booster

More than one important lesson missed there.....
- The shortest distance between two points is the straight line between them...therefore, if its 6km by road, there is no way that it could be a longer distance straight line....Even if the road were the direct straight line between the points....

yes you're right.. I bothered to measure it on a map and it's closer to 5.6km for a cross valley link whereas with our link to Somes it's about 4.5km

to think I used to be great with maths.. I hit college, discovered girls and beer and it all went downhill.. that and my SFC maths teacher was a complete retard