Looking for a decent Building to Building wireless bridge

[Wanabe]

I have two buildings that are approx. 300ft apart that are currently using Linksys WAP11's to bridge the network. Both ends of the bridge are equipped with Linksys' Signal Booster and are configured in Bridge Mode. The connection isn't bad for simple email/internet browsing and I was actually impressed with Linksys' ability to do what it does over a 300ft span (not line of sight) connection. But I have one user that accesses files from a server over this wireless bridge. Sometimes when they browse through large directories there is a delay of several seconds while the packets travel over the wirless bridge. Also, the signal is dropped on occasion and I have to reboot one end of the bridge to reestablish the connection. This same end of the bridge also expieriences a rather large amount of bad packed loss.

What I'm investigating is the possability of installing a wireless bridge on the outside of the building which would have a much stronger signal. Can anyone recommend a good solution for this?

Thanks,
Wanabe

[glc]

Try a couple external directional antennas - that's a lot cheaper than new hardware. The WAP11's are decent bridges and take antenna cables with RP-TNC connectors. Kick it out of diversity mode into single antenna operation, pull the rubber ducks, and hook up to one of the jacks.

www.hyperlinktech.com is a good source.

If you buy new bridges, go wireless-G this time, but you can't reuse the boosters even with Linksys G gear.

If you want to get creative, you could even build yourself a couple cantennas.

[Wanabe]

Thanks glc for the suggestions. We'll give it a go.

Wanabe

[Wanabe]

glc, I was thinking about this unit. Thoughts?

http://www.hyperlinktech.com/web/hg2411dp.php

[glc]

Great find. Those suckers will give you miles of range, you will probably only going to have to get one. With that kind of power, jack up your security.

[Wanabe]

Yes, hopefully this should work. I don't see why it wouldn't.

The two WAP11's are now in bridge mode only, however I've had to turn off encryption because it slowed things down to a crawl with the extra overhead. Perhaps with this solution I can reenable 64 or 128 encryption without seeing the drastic change in performance. What's nice is that if I decide to switch out to G gear down the road, I can still use the same antennas. Do you think I'll still need the signal boosters with this? I'm thinking that I may be able to drop the booster that is on the same end as the antenna.