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Increasing range a little?

My daughter has bought a house quite near to me and I want to give her access to my wireless router. It seems that she is <JUST> out of range, on a good day she can get maybe a 10% signal from me.

I have found antennas such as these:

mobile-wifi-antenna-5.gif


If I fit one to my router and one to her wireless NIC, how much of an improvement am I likely to see (if any)?

One alternative is a strategically placed repeater, but i'm trying to do this as cheaply as possible.

----------------------------------------

I came across these... Has anyone tried them, do they work?:

That set my brain ticking, and I have and old Sky mini dish, which with a small adjustment, can be made to point directly at ther house... :laugh: :shrug:

DSC01842.JPG

close%20up%20flatenna%20on%20desk%20with%20CD%20and%20pen.JPG
 
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Hi Agrajag,

Using a antenna should improve reception. It would be best sited on the outside of both houses. A directional antenna is even better. Do you know what frequency the router operates on? The higher the frequency the smaller the antenna also the power is lower so antenna's should improve things.

Regards Paul.
 
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I know one person who provides wireless internet to several houses who you might wanh to contact, caretaker im sure hes said he provides wireless to several homes in a small village.

EDIT:

I remember talking to some one who worked in the wireless industry in spain and he provided wireless over a 1 mile range im sure it was with a standard linksys router with the power on the wireless turned up full (30% power as standard) with a 20 quid antenna. if you want to pm me a email address will send you more details after i have spoken to him again.
 
Make sure to have as few walls and closed doors between you and your target adaptor as possible, so consider the placement to minimise that. Also a lot of routers only enable the standard 20Mhz channel but more modern ones (especially those using the draft 'n' spec) come with a 40Mhz 'wide' option that can improve connection stability at range.

Chances are Mel's links to custom made methods will perform better than most of the things you can find in shops, though they may look a little ugly :) .
 
Thanks guys, i think ill try the antennas outside first since I can pick these up for just a few of quid on Ebay.

I might try one of the custom projects though, they might be fun to build... :)
 
Yes, as ManofMeans said, I run a small wi-fi network from my home. I first started when I was the only person in the area to be able to get ADSL broadband. Instead of being selfish, I decided to share my broadband with residents in the area that were told they could not have it.

I was part of a club, but decided to go it alone when I understood enough about it.

At the peak when I started, I had 17 residents connecting to my 500kbps line. But hay, it was still better than dial up.

Now BT have managed to get ADSL broadband to all residents and I can get up to 2mb on a good day with a MAX service. My customers have dropped off to just 3 now. The main issue was I was very strict with what went through my network and had to threaten a few residents for misuse and P2P file sharing. Something that really used up the available bandwidth. It was a community thing and users had to realise that their what they did affected everybody. Since many wanted to use P2P, when broadband became available to them, they dropped my wireless service.

In the early days, I had no issues with going wireless. But, now so many ISPs give away wireless routers, I am competing with 20+ wireless signals. With just 13 channels to use in this county, finding an area on the spectrum is a real issue for me now. I've thought about giving it up a number of times. I suspect that many of these wireless routers are turned on by default but never used. Many are unsecure. Something I whole heartedly blame ISPs for.

Only today, I've had to fit a good directional antenna to 1 of my users just 3 houses away. Still not sure if it has fixed the issue for her.

What I am finding now, is that for less well off residents in a low income bracket (a lot of single mums where I live) can't afford a mobile phone as well as a BT phone. So, by ditching the BT phoine, they find they are unable to get broadband by any other means.

If you are just trying to connect to 1 user, then 2 directional antennas is your answer. But, if you want to use a laptop or PDA and connect anywhere in the area (nothing like surfing in the garden on the lappy), I sugest an omni-directional at the access point and have directional antennas pointing at it.

Make sure you keep your antenna as high as possible and free from obsticles. Roof tiles can deflect signals and avoid placing it next to a TV ariel. That creates splatter. Keep the antenna cable as short as possible for as little loss as possible.

Here is a piccy of my antenna. It's connected to a Netgear 834G V2 router which I have 2. I try to keep 2 of everything so I have a back-up to keep the service going if something breaks down. I have found the older V2 router better than later versions for connecting wirelessly and if I get a power cut, these routers just reconnect on their own when power is restored. The GT model and newer V3 G doesn't seem to want to do this.

antenna.jpg


Let us know how you get on m8.
 
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I actually put up something similar to your antenna on the side of my daughters house, thought not quite as big.

I managed to find a place for my router in direct line of sight to my daughters antenna.

She now gets a steady 60+% signal even though I'm still using the routers original antenna. Not bad for a range of about 100m. :p
 
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