Hello

I am not sure if my post is for this list... sorry if not.

I am new in wireless technology, and I need help in order
to do a wireless network with 7 public schools and our
building in the campus. This network will permit to schools
to have access to our intranet and have access to internet.
(schools will be part of our intranet)

In our site there are six NetBSD 1.5/i386 servers and one
extra available for this project with 4 free PCI slots (if
needed). Also there is an old antenna tower (unused) over
our building. The antenna tower is 12m high (40 ft aprox)

I have raised to middle of the tower (20 ft) and I could see
the seven schools (with binoculars) (there is a perfect
direct visual access).

In a map of the city, i wrote marks of our building and the
seven schools. The measure of the angle between the leftmost
school and the rightmost school is 40 grads (the origin of
the angle is our building)

Using the scale rule of the map, I mesured the distance
between our building and the schools. The most closer is
1.4km (0.88 miles) and the most far 5.8km (3.7 miles)

The seven schools have a LAN (with utp hubs), about 30-50
PC's each LAN using win95/98. One of these PC's have a
modem and share the internet access to the PC's.  I think
an antenna with a tower of 3m (10 ft) over the computer room
of the school will be enough tall.

Communication between schools is not needed. The data banks,
web servers, mail servers and the educational videos mpg
are in our NetBSD servers, the need of communication will
be from our site to schools (not school to school)

This could be the first part of a project to cover 300
grads of the city (sorry, we have a hill to south)
and give access to +100 public schools. Omnidirectional
antennas are not permitted in Mexico for 2.4 GHz.

Questions:

1) Is this enough information in order you can tell me
your comments, ideas, experiences, etc?

2) Am I thinking with the wrong technology for my propouse?

3) How is the best equipment for my central station?
Is a card?, a radio in a separate box?
Does I need an extra amplifier?
How would you do a central station?
How about the length of the cable to antenna?

4) How must be a school radio station?
The modem of the PC will be replaced by a card?
How about the antenna?

5) How is seen this network?
Is like a router with a lot of serial ports?
Does I need 4 IP's for each serial port?
(network, IPlocal, IPremote, broadcast)

6) Does I must to think in encrypt communications?

7) Can you suggest brands, model, etc?

8) Is it expensive?

9) Please put here the question that I forgot ask.
(and answer it ;)

Thanks in advance

Heron Gallegos
Centro Siglo XXI - Informatica Educativa
Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico
(heavy NetBSD user since 1994)