In a rural location, long range solutions exist to expand the range of your Wi-Fi network. Although the wireless transmitter inside your router is usually fine for signal for your home, that signal often isn't strong enough to extend beyond your front yard. Selecting the proper Wi-Fi antenna extends the signal to distances that would otherwise remain unreachable with just the router.
Parabolic Dishes
Parabolic dish antennas offer the strongest overall link. However, the highly-directional nature of this antenna type means that it may be very difficult to make and maintain the link to the sending station. These are often as large or slightly larger than a satellite dish you would use for DirecTV or Dish Network satellite reception. Distances over 2 miles may suffer from from network acknowledgement time out issues, where the receiving end of the connection did not respond to the sending end within the allotted time. This can normally be adjusted at the router or sending station through the unit's interface.
Backfire Designs
Backfire antennas look like miniature satellite parabolic designs. These are discreetly mounted to a pole or the side of a structure, offering strong performance for building to building links exceeding the range of a conventional wireless router. Most backfire antennas are around 10 inches in diameter. Like all parabolic designs, care must be taken to ensure obstacles such as trees and other structures are not in the line of sight between the dish and the target. Backfire dishes are preferred when smaller size is desired and the extended range of a larger parabolic is not required.
Yagi Antennas
Traditional Yagi-style antennas are useful for long-range rural Wi-Fi applications. Yagi designs are, like parabolic antennas, very precise in their aiming requirements. Yagi antennas have the ability to transmit at 2-3 two the three mile distances, comparable to parabolic solutions. Yagi antennas tend to not be as precise with aiming requirements as parabolic designs. This is useful if you already have an antenna on your roof for television or radio reception, but would rather re-purpose the antenna to extend your Wi-Fi network to an outbuilding or shed.
Mesh Networks
Also known as cloud networks, mesh networking is an effective way to cover the vast expanses often encountered in rural areas. The "antennas" used in this environment are actually repeaters, installed every so often as needed to repeat and boost the wireless signal as needed. Signals originate from a standard wired high-speed connection, with a directional antenna such as a parabolic aimed at the primary node. Each node then relays data to the next, and so on as needed. Repeaters are small low-power stick antenna relays or conventional wireless routers, each covering a few hundred feet prior to needing another relay point. Further connections closer to buildings have a wired connection option from the node nearest to the structure.
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