Bridging two houses to make one network

I am preparing to move out of my parent's house and wanted to help them find ways to lower their living expenses. My sister lives a couple of doors down the street and was wondering if I could link the houses to using one internet service provider. Over the past couple of years, I heard about an inovative network equipment company called Ubiquiti. They primarity make commercial grade products that are over kill for a private residence but still very cool.

They have many different products for various needs. Finding exactly what is needed or understanding the abilities of each product can be confusing if you do not have knowledge of the various components of a network. I need to connect two house. Put more simply, I need to connect two wireless routers without using a very long ethernet cables. While researching networking equipment I found the device I need is a network bridge.

While checking out network bridges I came across the familiar name Ubiquiti and saw they had a wireless bridge called a NanoBridge. It is a 5GHz AC wireless Sender and Receiver network bridge. This would be my solution.

The full check list: 2 weather proof ethernet cables, 2 30 ft ethernet cables, 2 Ubiquiti ethernet surge protects, and 2 NanoBridges. The next very important item is having mounting locations. The NanoBridges need direct line of sight to work as well as possible. I have read of people turning the power up and shooting them between attics but I did not want to use such a high level of signal. We placed one on the chiminey which we were able to run the wire between the housing and the other on an exaust vent which the wire was also pushed down the housing. Some holes where needed to be poked and some smart routing of wiring in the attic was needed but nothing too exhausting was needed.

Once connected, the main NanoBeam that was feeding the internet only needed to be plugged in. The receiver needed to the router to be configued as a extender/repeater. I am sure there are other configurations but this was the quickest and easiest at the time. With moth units being so close I was able to turn down the signal as low as possible and still received full strength. Doing a minor performance test showed minimal latency being introducted to the connection from the receiving end.

The final conclusion. This was a great set up to share an internet connection for two very close properties and minimized the internet bill for both parties. All components purchased was about $220. A one time purchase of $220 to save $60 a month on internet bills for life seems like a pretty good deal to me. Finding a problem and building a solution might be one of my favorite activities. This facination overflows from my software engineering into other aspects like this one example. Take any problem you find and build your unique solution no matter what it takes.

Note: Sorry about no pictures. This was written after they were set up.