Posted: 1/11/2011 4:47:45 PM EDT
| Ok folks I hope some of you can answer a question for me about wifi. My wife works at the local college and has access to their wireless network. We live close enough that if she is out in the yard with her laptop which has a built in wireless card she is able to get a signal but when she comes inside she loses it. What can we do to get the signal inside the house I had thought about putting an antenna up outside and running the coax in the house to another antenna will this work. If not can someone advise me as to what we would need to do to get the signal inside the house. |
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There's easier ways that are iffy but this way is cheap enough.
Best to connect to the school with an 'access point' or a wireless repeater. The Linksys WAP54G is one I'm familiar with. They are very good and use them a lot for different stuff. Cheap on ebay or retail $ at many office supply places. Get one and put it upstairs in the attic or the highest place. Get a 2.4 gHz gain antenna off ebay of $20 or so or make a 'Cantenna'. A cantenna can be as simple as aluminium foil wrapped around a paint spray can, taped, pulled off and a probe from a coax cable stuck in the closed end about an inch from the end. Goggle Cantenna. Get a reverse TNC connector cable to go to the WAP54 and use on the other end what ever mates with your 2.4 gc antenna. You can set up the WAP as a wireless repeater. By removing one of the antennas and connecting it to your gain antenna pointed at the school's access point you are ensured a strong fast signal. The other antenna will retransmit into your house. You can also plug an ethernet cable and connect that to a hub and feed everything in your house. http://homesupport.cisco.com/en-us/wireless/lbc/WAP54G ???, just ask... |
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Quoted:
Ok folks I hope some of you can answer a question for me about wifi. My wife works at the local college and has access to their wireless network. We live close enough that if she is out in the yard with her laptop which has a built in wireless card she is able to get a signal but when she comes inside she loses it. What can we do to get the signal inside the house I had thought about putting an antenna up outside and running the coax in the house to another antenna will this work. If not can someone advise me as to what we would need to do to get the signal inside the house. first you need to purchase a usb wifi adapter that has a external antenna, remove the rubber duck antenna and connect it to a length of cable running to a nice 15dbi + omni directional antenna, or if you have good line of sight to the general area to the college you could purchase a directional antenna and spend a few hours aiming it to gain the best signal. Don't buy the cheap crap on ebay, they "might" sell you a decent antenna (it's a gamble)cables are almost as important as the antenna with respect to wifi. I highly recommend http://www.l-com.com/ been buying things from them for years. Or another route, if you don't want to mess with cables would be to purchase the aforementioned usb wifi adapter and then buy the highest dbi rated wifi antenna, I have one that is rated at 9, it works fairly well for picking up the faint signals. However, it does not come close to performing like the external 19dbi omni-directional antenna 30 ft in the air 
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what is this? i thought i was on ar15.com. what about the good ole cantenna? link
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So we've got two good solutions listed here with the wireless access point and the USB ethernet card with external antenna.
Would the wireless access point have a considerably stronger signal than the USB ethernet card and subsequently have the advantage there?? |
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Quoted:
There's easier ways that are iffy but this way is cheap enough. Best to connect to the school with an 'access point' or a wireless repeater. The Linksys WAP54G is one I'm familiar with. They are very good and use them a lot for different stuff. Cheap on ebay or retail $ at many office supply places. Get one and put it upstairs in the attic or the highest place. Get a 2.4 gHz gain antenna off ebay of $20 or so or make a 'Cantenna'. A cantenna can be as simple as aluminium foil wrapped around a paint spray can, taped, pulled off and a probe from a coax cable stuck in the closed end about an inch from the end. Goggle Cantenna. Get a reverse TNC connector cable to go to the WAP54 and use on the other end what ever mates with your 2.4 gc antenna. You can set up the WAP as a wireless repeater. By removing one of the antennas and connecting it to your gain antenna pointed at the school's access point you are ensured a strong fast signal. The other antenna will retransmit into your house. You can also plug an ethernet cable and connect that to a hub and feed everything in your house. http://homesupport.cisco.com/en-us/wireless/lbc/WAP54G ???, just ask... Ok that sounds simple enough I am off to find the parts thanks |
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Quoted:
So we've got two good solutions listed here with the wireless access point and the USB ethernet card with external antenna. Would the wireless access point have a considerably stronger signal than the USB ethernet card and subsequently have the advantage there?? The USB card is limited to the length of the USB cable, therefore determining where the antenna can be located. Signal strength [pwr at the connector] is about +15 dBm or so in both cases. Also the USB requires a dedicated computer to connect to and the PC needs to be running all the time with internet connection sharing turned on. The versatile WAP54G access point gear has an Ethernet port allowing it to be located most anywhere. I used to have a point to point bridge set up using the older WAP-11's. The distance was about .9 miles to my buddy's house. The antennas were directional grid antennas and I had to shoot thru a woods about 200 feet to connect. If there was brush in the way speed was dramatically affected and if wet, forget it. When it was trimmed, all was good. The WAP11 was inside his house upstairs and about 8 feet of .125 semi-rigid coax was the feed line on to the antenna his end. My end was similar. The newer WAP54G's are much better radios. [Until you try to go 15 miles, then they are very slow even w/ amps]. Tranzeos fix that issue. |
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I've done this successfully, and have actually linked up well over a mile.
Items needed: External WiFi usb stick with RP-SMA antenna socket. Preferably one of the 300 mw ones, search on ebay. 10' USB extension cable. Super Cantenna with pigtail to RP-SMA (comes with the antenna) www.wirelessgarden.com You want this item: http://www.cantenna.com/ And this: http://www.wirelessgardenstore.com/product-p/eng-eub9603ext.htm The 10' USB Male A to Female A extension is available at most business / computer stores. You will plug the extension cable into the laptop USB socket, and the wifi stick will go on the other end. Then the Super Cantenna, which will be placed in a window facing the direction of the desired signal, will be connected to the wifi stick with the short pigtail that comes with the antenna. The reason is that at these gigahz frequencies coax is very, very lossy, so you want the coax as short as possible. No, the Super Cantenna is not a pringles can antenna. The pringles can does not work. It's not a metal can, it's cardboard. The Super Cantenna is a directional antenna (technically a "waveguide") with a 30 degree conical pickup pattern and approximately 12 db of gain. |
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Link
I am in the research phase to link two homes on a farm. This looks to be the route I am taking. With the linksys router I can have dsl in one house and wifi linked to the dsl in the second one. |
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Or get this for ~$30 and all your antenna issues are over.
This one is like I generally use w/ 802.11b, but lower gain ones are cheaper on ebay. Don't be intimidated by the coax feed issue, even RG-58 will work if kept short. The rev TNC's can be hard to find fast, I've taken apart router antennas, stripped the thin teflon coax and carefully soldered the coax/TNC asm to large coax. Works fine. But fragile. http://cgi.ebay.com/Hyperlink-Technologies-T-2400F-Grid-Antenna-HG2424G-/200562868827?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2eb27a825b Heated blade stripper works best for teflon but there are some tricks if ur interested. |
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Quoted:
There's easier ways that are iffy but this way is cheap enough. Best to connect to the school with an 'access point' or a wireless repeater. The Linksys WAP54G is one I'm familiar with. They are very good and use them a lot for different stuff. Cheap on ebay or retail $ at many office supply places. Get one and put it upstairs in the attic or the highest place. Get a 2.4 gHz gain antenna off ebay of $20 or so or make a 'Cantenna'. A cantenna can be as simple as aluminium foil wrapped around a paint spray can, taped, pulled off and a probe from a coax cable stuck in the closed end about an inch from the end. Goggle Cantenna. Get a reverse TNC connector cable to go to the WAP54 and use on the other end what ever mates with your 2.4 gc antenna. You can set up the WAP as a wireless repeater. By removing one of the antennas and connecting it to your gain antenna pointed at the school's access point you are ensured a strong fast signal. The other antenna will retransmit into your house. You can also plug an ethernet cable and connect that to a hub and feed everything in your house. http://homesupport.cisco.com/en-us/wireless/lbc/WAP54G ???, just ask... Here's a few more question's for you what is the max lenght of coax that can be used and what type do you recommend I want to put an Omni Directional antenna on top of my tower and am looking at a 75 to 100 foot run of coax. Also what is your opinion on building an atenna array using 2 or more Omni's placed in different locations. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
There's easier ways that are iffy but this way is cheap enough. Best to connect to the school with an 'access point' or a wireless repeater. The Linksys WAP54G is one I'm familiar with. They are very good and use them a lot for different stuff. Cheap on ebay or retail $ at many office supply places. Get one and put it upstairs in the attic or the highest place. Get a 2.4 gHz gain antenna off ebay of $20 or so or make a 'Cantenna'. A cantenna can be as simple as aluminium foil wrapped around a paint spray can, taped, pulled off and a probe from a coax cable stuck in the closed end about an inch from the end. Goggle Cantenna. Get a reverse TNC connector cable to go to the WAP54 and use on the other end what ever mates with your 2.4 gc antenna. You can set up the WAP as a wireless repeater. By removing one of the antennas and connecting it to your gain antenna pointed at the school's access point you are ensured a strong fast signal. The other antenna will retransmit into your house. You can also plug an ethernet cable and connect that to a hub and feed everything in your house. http://homesupport.cisco.com/en-us/wireless/lbc/WAP54G ???, just ask... Here's a few more question's for you what is the max lenght of coax that can be used and what type do you recommend I want to put an Omni Directional antenna on top of my tower and am looking at a 75 to 100 foot run of coax. Also what is your opinion on building an atenna array using 2 or more Omni's placed in different locations. If you want to put an omni directional on top of the tower, your best bet is to put the access point up there with it. The only ones I'm familiar with are Tranzeos and they can be powered via the Ethernet cable. Hold on a minute and I'll look on ebay and find a typical candidate, I'm going to search tranzeo... Perfect... Make sure it's reset to factory defaults. http://cgi.ebay.com/Tranzeo-TR-6000-/220722032140?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_2&hash=item33640eee0c http://www.tranzeo.com/products/radios/TR-6000-Series And a hi pwr one, probably not needed: http://cgi.ebay.com/Tranzeo-TR-6600-/220722006868?pt=COMP_EN_Routers&hash=item33640e8b54 Note these versions have a jack for an external antenna, desirable for you since you won't have to mod one to add it. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
There's easier ways that are iffy but this way is cheap enough. Best to connect to the school with an 'access point' or a wireless repeater. The Linksys WAP54G is one I'm familiar with. They are very good and use them a lot for different stuff. Cheap on ebay or retail $ at many office supply places. Get one and put it upstairs in the attic or the highest place. Get a 2.4 gHz gain antenna off ebay of $20 or so or make a 'Cantenna'. A cantenna can be as simple as aluminium foil wrapped around a paint spray can, taped, pulled off and a probe from a coax cable stuck in the closed end about an inch from the end. Goggle Cantenna. Get a reverse TNC connector cable to go to the WAP54 and use on the other end what ever mates with your 2.4 gc antenna. You can set up the WAP as a wireless repeater. By removing one of the antennas and connecting it to your gain antenna pointed at the school's access point you are ensured a strong fast signal. The other antenna will retransmit into your house. You can also plug an ethernet cable and connect that to a hub and feed everything in your house. http://homesupport.cisco.com/en-us/wireless/lbc/WAP54G ???, just ask... Here's a few more question's for you what is the max lenght of coax that can be used and what type do you recommend I want to put an Omni Directional antenna on top of my tower and am looking at a 75 to 100 foot run of coax. Also what is your opinion on building an atenna array using 2 or more Omni's placed in different locations. I don't know how that would offer any benefit of just one. Also, I use LMR400 coax and keep it short. You'll lose 8 dB in 100 feet. |