Part 1: My DIY project - Use an ASTRO Dish as an IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networking Antenna

Part 1

Yup, you heard it right.

To use an ASTRO dish as an IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networking Antenna.

Don't understand what the hell I'm talking about? Read on.


I got inspired by stumbling across this page ...
http://www.wwc.edu/frohro/Airport/Primestar/Primestar.html


Why?
Because the location where I teach is a rural area and there is no internet connection available there, so its so bloody boring. I got an unused ASTRO dish too laying in my house, so what the heck, might as well use it for experimentation purpose.

Is it possible?
Theorectically, yes. The current world record for the longest Wi-Fi distance record is 382 kilometers, held by a researcher Ermanno Pietrosemoli, who hails from Latin America. He established a Wi-Fi link between two computers located in El Aguila and Platillon Mountain, Venezuela. That's a distance of 382 kilometers, or 238 miles. He used technology from Intel, which is concocting its own long-range Wi-Fi equipment, and some off-the-shelf parts. Pietrosemoli gets about 3 megabits per second in each direction on his long-range connections.

Nearest town to my school is Mukah, and its approximately 70 kilometers from my school. So, the idea is quite plausible to try since my area is consisted of lowlands, no hills here dude, so chances of hills interfering the signals are slim. However, I really need to focus more on the design of the actual antenna since it will be the focus and the workhorse for this project. So, you town people should appreciate your easy-to-reach-use-WIFI-signals because you don't have to try zany ideas to even try to get connected to the net.

By the way, I can reach the internet from my school by using my trusty K750i but that's by paying. I need a more cost effective way and this Wi-Fi thingy seems to be the answer.

After doing some more research on the matter, I stumbled upon another good site which is at http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/. They even use easy to find items for their projects. They dub the site as "Poor Man's WiFi" since they use a cheap USB Wireless adaptor + DIY antenna for their projects. What suprises me the most was they were using asian parabolic cookware @ wok as their antenna, can you believe that?

There's alot of designs available - like the CAN-tenna, WOK-Fi etc ..
But I think I'll stick with the ASTRO Dish + USB Wi-Fi design since I already have an unused dish laying around.

More on the design in Part 2 ...