Hi, I live outside of Alice Springs on a reserve with two houses about 100m apart. What is the best way to setup a network that would enable us to play PC games between the two houses. We do not have good phone lines, ie, we use microwave systems and speeds at the best of times are only around 28k.

Cheers

Re: The best way to connect 2 houses

A 100 metre run is the official limit for cat 5 cable, but this is likely to be the cheapest option. Should work fine. You will need a network card (or might be onboard already) in each PC, and the cable must be connected in crossover configuration. Just type cat5 crossover into Google for the correct wiring. If you haven't got access to a crimper, wherever you buy the cable should be able to terminate it for you.

Chris B

Re: The best way to connect 2 houses

Buy the latest copy of Silicon Chip magazine and you will see how to make a parabolic directional antenna out of common cooking utensils.

In a window in each of the houses pointing at the other you'd have a wireless bridge with a directional antenna, connecting the two into a single local area network.

Re: The best way to connect 2 houses

Gary,

You might be able to connect both PC's with wireless cards, as long as you have a clear line of sight between the 2 houses. Whether you'll need additional gear apart from the cards themselves, I'm not sure.

Outdoor range on current PCI wireless cards is up to 300m.

Regards,

Daniel

Re: The best way to connect 2 houses

An Ethernet cable connection is only effective if you're willing to have a cable layed underground. Laying an Ethernet cable above ground for long distances have been known to get struck by lightning.

I think the easiest (and possibly cheapest) option is to go Wireless if you can set up the wireless tranceivers to be in line-of-sight of each other. You may also have to look into high gain antennas etc too since the distance in question is rather long.