Ask HN: What's with the DIY state of the art long-range Wi-Fi?
Reach out to various existing infrastructure projects that build and maintain large community-owned P2P WiFi deployments, the two largest ones are Freifunk and Guifi. They would surely be able to and wanting to help you, if you reach out to them. Try <a href="https://freifunk.net/en/contact/" rel="nofollow">https://freifunk.net/en/contact/</a> and <a href="https://matrix.guifi.net/" rel="nofollow">https://matrix.guifi.net/</a><p>Most of them are using commodity hardware from Mikrotik, Teltonika and Ubiquiti. Basic setup for a personal node is just an antenna + router. Then they usually have the concept of "supernodes" who are responsible for hooking up multiple personal nodes, and have uni-directional antennas + multiple ones + bigger routers to facilitate the routing.<p>I'm not sure you'll be able to put together a supernode with decent range for under $100 though, think the cost would be more than that, but I would be happy to be proven wrong.<p>In terms of firmware, I've almost exclusively seen OpenWRT being used (and the rest running default Mikrotik/Ubiquiti firmware), with various self-made patches done to it before installing it on the hardware.