Trying to get WIFI in the garage... This is making my head hurt

First off sorry if this common knowledge from 2012 but I missed that boat I guess. (just switched to a smart phone a year ago )

Recently I dumped cox/twc cable, after endless problems and not wanting to go with dish network. The city is supposed to have a free all over the city wifi signal. I jumped into this thinking I could hop onto the free city signal, but its having issues and I found out too late. Instead I found some open public signals like starbocks or macdonalds have.

I was told I would be good with a fairly large parabolic wifi dish and a USB Alpha router. The antenna dish is directional ie only sends and receives (free open public wifi) signal from two blocks away, it does not send signal anywhere in the house. The alpha router goes directly to a PC. The PC is in the highest room of the house to pick up the free wifi signal. So here is where I am stuck currently.

I downloaded Connectify to redistribute the signal, but the PC only wants to send a signal back down the street How do I get the PC to send a separate signal in another direction to the garage? Will the wifi repeaters that plug into the wall do the trick?

You won't be able to repeat omnidirectionally with a dish antenna, need another radio. What's a usb Alpha router? Does it have a Ethernet port? Connect that to another router configured as regular old access point (anything will do, but I like something that runs OpenWrt), that router will give you your local wireless network.

My shop is about 350 feet from my house where the cable comes in. I have two of these (one at the house that transmits and one at the shop that receives) that work great. Only very minor latency and speed losses over that distance, even through a closed metal door. I'm very pleased.

http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-0000070700985-NanoStation-loco-M5/dp/B004EHSV4W?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00

In reply to BrokenYugo:

Thanks I think I am going in the right direction now

Alpha is just a popular "wardrive" router brand, for laptops. I guess it is a cheap signal booster/ router for external antennas and gets along with linux. It just has a single usb plug no ethernet.

Is there such a thing as routers that have usb input?

In reply to jere:

That's a "wireless adapter", not a router, not what you want for a repeater.

There are routers with usb ports but those are more for data (e.g. personal server), I don't think any will let you plug in a usb wireless adapter like that.

So yeah, two routers connected with a ethernet cable, one configured as a client to hook up to the distant AP, one configured as your local AP. At least that's how I know how to do it. I think you MIGHT be able to use one router that has multiple antennas in repeater mode, a stick antenna on one port and a dish on the other.

In reply to BrokenYugo:

Thanks thats a big help!