I've though of this idea awhile. Are there any devices like wireless lan, which could be used locally on a fair bit of distance scale.

Eg, is there anything I could get to setup a Local Area Network with my friend who lives about 1.3-1.5 miles away.

Would it be possible to setup some form of network with a distance like that?

(I don't mean using the Internet with programs like Hamachi.)

Depends. If you live in the country, you could probably get away with running 1.5 miles of ethernet cable to his house, assuming you wrapped it with something durable (PS: use ethernet surge protectors if you do). As for wireless, I don't think it'd reach that far.

[quote author=J link=topic=14733.msg150242#msg150242 date=1144587083]
Depends. If you live in the country, you could probably get away with running 1.5 miles of ethernet cable to his house, assuming you wrapped it with something durable (PS: use ethernet surge protectors if you do). As for wireless, I don't think it'd reach that far.
[/quote]

You can't run standard twisted pair cables more than ~330 feet.  You'd need to use fiber optic cabling.

You have four options:

1.  Get the hefty number of permits and install extremely expensive fiber optic cables between your house and his.
2.  Lease a pricey dedicated line from your ISP.
3.  Buy two expensive, high-powered wireless signal antennas for both you and your friend; something similar to this, this or this which will put your network at a much greater risk and be prepared to have outages during bad weather.
4.  Set up a VPN via telephone or the internet.

Or just get a massive military grade wireless router from miltope or someone.
http://www.miltope.com/wasp.html It says designed for aircraft usage, which is a major use of this thing, but it has about a 2mi range. It saves you from needing a second antenna on the other end to send the signal back because the thing has a really insane receiver on it too.

[quote author=quasi-modo link=topic=14733.msg150287#msg150287 date=1144630701]
Or just get a massive military grade wireless router from miltope or someone.
http://www.miltope.com/wasp.html It says designed for aircraft usage, which is a major use of this thing, but it has about a 2mi range. It saves you from needing a second antenna on the other end to send the signal back because the thing has a really insane receiver on it too.
[/quote]

Generally, most wireless networking hardware functions as a tranceiver (trasmitter/receiver).  Two high-powered antennas are often needed on both hosts to ensure connectivity in less than perfect condintions—line of sight over a distance of a few miles is difficult to maintain.  Somehow I doubt that the main military base is using one of these.  They most likely have towers close to the size of your average radio station.

This isn't for on base stuff though. They are using those extensively in Iraq on units to create a wireless lan with a diameter of several miles. The system's miltope makes do have beefy transmitters on them, but no where near what that thing has of course. So miltope had a big engineering challenge making that thing because it had to be able to pick up a laptop a mile away. That is why of course those things will cose you an insane ammount of money (several grand). Pretty much you have that thing on one of the many vehicles to create a convoy wide lan. Each APC has one of these which are mostly used to target (mortar fire specifically), then some of the troops would be carrying these, then you have a ton of these running around which are used for almost everything. That last one will run you about 6 grand.

Edit: I can't find any specifics on the field model online, the link I posted was their airline one, so now I'm starting to think maybe the field wasp is still in production. But I was at their facility in Montgomery for a job interview about a month ago and I am just going off of what they told me.