I recently rented an apartment about 100 yards from my brother's house. I have line of sight to his house and can pick up his home AP signal with one of my two laptops if I go out on my balcony (facing his house) or put the laptop by the window. The other laptop will sometimes see the SSID broadcast, but fails to connect, drops, etc.

We would like to set up a persistent wireless connection between our homes. We would prefer each network be logically segmented as independent networks, but he will share his internet connection. I've got a bunch of tv shows saved to a NAS by my TiVO that I'd like to make available to him across the wireless link. My brother strongly prefers to not mess with his WAP at all. His network is running fine and is afraid to mess it up. I guess you could say he is "technologically declined". If we can get a reliable 11Mbps connection we will be satisfied.

What hardware do I need to make this work? I was thinking a router with two wireless interfaces (external antennas) a wired interface, and a directional antenna mounted on my balcony facing his house.

Can anyone recommend hardware to make this happen? Cheaper is better. I'll only be living in the area a year or two. I do have an old satellite TV antenna if that can be used to direct the signal.