I just put together a simple system to use on the boat to increase the connection distance for my laptop when using wifi. I bought a Bullet 2HP from Ubiquiti Networks and attached it to a 7 dB omnidirectional antenna. The two units just connect directly together and terminate in a cat5 cable that plugs into your network card input on the laptop. The laptop thinks it is on a LAN. A splitter injects 12 volts into the cable to supply the power to the Bullet 2HP.
A friend used one to connect to a home wifi router over 5 kilometers away across water. Others have reported connections exceeding 10 kilometers to commercial wifi services.
It is designed for mounting outdoors the way it is sold but I thought with the salt water I would seal it up in a piece of 1.5" pvc electrical conduit, with a bit of foam rubber inside to keep it from rattling around.
You do not have to install any software on your computer. To use the Bullet you just login using any web browser, look at all wifi signals displayed and log on to the network of your choice, if it is secure you need a pass word to access.
You do need to know a bit about networks and setting IP addresses to set up the Bullet the first time it is used but after that no special knowledge is needed to use it. If you have friend that can help with the initial setup then it will be very easy.
I have not used it on the boat yet. It is under a tarp and lots of snow. I will haul it to Florida later this month, I hope to use this to improve the connections to shore based wifi services.
Bob
link for the Bullet is
http://www.ubnt.com/downloads/b2hp_datasheet.pdf
