Long distance wifi internet

Question

Is it possible to supply internet up to 5km-10km using wifi ? If yes how ?

Me and my friend want to get Internet in our Village. Our current options are 1. Mobile internet(not cost effective at all) 2. Local Broadband provider (which is over 5km away so it's practically not suitable to use cable in this long distance moreover it's rural area)

Which is why we need something to broadcast internet up to 5km-10km wirelessly. Googled but not getting anything specific or maybe my knowledge of networking is too poor to understand.

Please HELP!

Answer 1

If you have line of sight then it should be possible to set up a wireless link over a few kilometers. You would want high gain antennas on both ends, you could either (ab)use wi-fi gear or look for gear designed for the purpose.

Getting the antennas as high off the ground as possible is nearly always a good idea to ensure you get the line of sight path and to reduce the impact of ground reflections.

Be aware that simply slapping high gain antennas on wifi gear may exceed effective radiated power limitations in radio regulations. If you care about being legal you would need to check your local laws and quite probablly turn down the transmit power. Having the high gain antennas still helps even with reduced transmit power because high gain antennas help both transmission and reception.

If you want to connect devices wirelessly at the endpoint you would use a seperate wifi network with an omnidirectional anntena for that.

Answer 2

If I understand correctly, you want to connect WiFi devices in your village to the Internet, but the closest reasonable-cost Internet access point is over 5 km away.

One possible approach:

(1) Set up each WiFi access point in your village in "wireless mesh network mode", so each WiFi device talks to the closest access point, which relays packets to the next WiFi access point, and so on. (This is the first step toward Municipal Wi-Fi and Wireless community network).

(2) Install some backhaul point-to-point link from your Internet access point over the 5km to some convenient convenient Point (POP) in or near your village.

In my part of the world, common backhaul options for carrying broadband Internet data include:

• small wire mesh dishes ones on top of roof pointed at the nearest tower of a few "wireless cable" internet service providers ("fixed wireless").
• big shrouded solid microwave radio-relay dishes on tall towers owned by the telephone company every 30 or 40 miles
• coax cable (cable Internet access)
• telephone wires (digital subscriber line)
• fiber optic cables

I hear that other backhaul options for carrying broadband Internet data a few kilometers include:

• broadband over power lines
• free-space optical communication such as RONJA
• long-range Wi-Fi (point-to-point)
• WiMAX

(3) Connect the wireless mesh to the point-to-point link, with a short "Ethernet cable" between your Point and the nearest WiFi access point.

Would any of the approaches used by South African wireless community networks or the Seattle Wireless Community Wireless Network work for you?

With everything else held equal, the more focused (or "directional") a radio antenna is, the longer the distance one can communicate with it. So antennas designed to communicate in all directions ("omnidirectional", "broadcast") generally communicate over very short distances. When people want to communicate over long distances with radio, we are forced to use very directional antennas and point-to-point communications, and we spend a lot of time aiming one antenna at the other antenna to get the best signal.