I just bought a Orinoco card with a external antenna (7dbi boost). The range is to be horrible compared to my cisco aironet card. Connecting to a near by wap give me about -20 db signal strength, when the Orinoco card with out antenna gives me -60 db and with the antenna gives me -70db. I have tried grounding the magnetic base of the antenna to a few things and just holding or setting it on a table and I get the same results. The card is labeled Enterasys Roamabout, but it was sold as a rebadged Orinoco gold card. The only drivers I had for windows xp were the Orinoco drives I found on the web which worked. Is this all the range I should execpt or did I get taken and sold a junk card.
Since Christmas I've purchased and then either kept or returned a total of
11 different WiFi client devices. My Orinoco card is one of the keepers. It has one of the best receivers of any of the cards I tested. I'm posting through this card right now. I'm about 75 feet, a concrete block wall and a wood stud wall away from my Netgear WAP. I have one of those small cellular-type whip antennas connected through about 6 ft of non-low-loss coax. I currently see a signal strength of -60 db. With an SMC brand panel antenna that improves to -51. The internal antenna reports -71. With all except the internal antenna, the link speed is reported as the full 54mb speed in both directions.
My only complaint is that the driver performance is worse than some of the others I tested, limiting thruput and chewing up enough CPU cycles that my laptop's fan runs faster to keep up with the extra heat generated. Only the SMC card is worse in that regard.
I'd send that card back and get another. Or better yet, just get a Proxim branded card. That way you can be sure nothing has been cut from the card in the process of cobranding.
I believe the Enterasys card is made by Proxim, but Enterasys provides its own drivers and firmware for the card. The Orinoco drivers might work, but through put will most likly degrade.
You should D/L the drivers from Enterasys for your card. go to
How near in feet? What model WAP? What manner of antenna on the WAP? Such things can be calculated to see if your numbers are reasonable.
Something is broken. If you're getting -60dBm without an external antenna, you should be getting over 7dB more signal, or about -53dBm, with the antenna. Instead of gain, you're getting a -10dB loss.
At 2.4Ghz, that will do absolutely nothing. Any ground that you can conjur will only act as a reflector. Any connecting wire looks more like an inductor (RF choke) than a suitable ground. What manner of antenna is this thing? Make and model?
I've seen the same advertisements on eBay. The vintage is Orinoco "classic", which is the same as the original Hermes chipset Orinoco cards. Since then, various companies have retained the name, but change the guts radically. The latest Proxim cards are quite good, but the ones in the between are in my opinion subject to some suspicion.
I have several Orinoco Silver cards, which are my "standard" test cards. I use them for everything. They work fine.
Did you use the Orinoco Classic drivers or something else? Version?
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It's possible that the card is broken. The numbers you give make no sense. The signal is suppose to improve with an external antenna, not deteriorate. However, I can't make much sense of your test conditions. My wild guess(tm) would be a broken coax connector.
My mag mount antenna is much happier with a reflective surface under it. In the car, the roof is the obvious place. In an office, I've found that many wipe off marking boards are metallic. Filing cabinets work too, but the 19" cable on my antenna is a limiting factor. In one place, when I told the customer that I was connecting to a WAP, he said they didn't have one. Some scouting indicated that it was actually downstairs in a different company.
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This is supposed to be a 5dBi antenna, but I find it makes just a db or two improvement. I think most of the improvement is from getting the antenna outside the car.
Hmmm... 6" long. The antenna looks like a 1.25 wave length vertical collinear. For only the antenna, I would guess an optimistic 5dBi gain. However, the antenna comes with 5ft of RG-174 coax cable which has -3dB loss at 2.4GHz. Net gain is 2dB, which is approximately what you're seeing. HyperLink should have included the coax loss or at least specified the coax loss seperately. Shorten the coax for better results.
I have that very same antenna. In fact, I'm connected through it right now. I've seen the same performance you have. It benefits greatly from a small ground plane. I currently have it sitting on the metal case of the floppy drive that goes with this laptop. The Orinoco utility reports
-62db receive strength. If I lift up the antenna, remove the floppy drive and sit the antenna back on the wooden table, the signal strength drops to
Reality is rarely very attractive. I'm a bit slow on the superlatives today, so bear with me. Instead of 5dBi, how about "3x power gain" or perhaps "3 times better"? Maybe some useless facts like "no tuning necessary". The coax should probably be listed as "ultra-flexible, low-loss, 98.5% shielded, and optimized length". That's what I like about antenna design. It's all magic, you can't see how it work, comparisons are difficult, and test results can vary either way by
100%. Also, the uglier they are, the better they work.
Just a slight oversight on the part of every last manufacturer of antennas with attached pigtails.
A very fast and sloppy NEC2 model shows 5.1dBi with a takeoff angle of about 20 degrees above horizontal, with lots of weird lobes. I don't think the base has a balun resulting in the requirement for a ground plane or the VSWR climbs fast. That also means that the coax cable somewhat mangles the pattern and radiates a bit. I'll do a better job when I have time.
Specifying the loss for that little tiny coax with no number branded on it would have made the antenna much less attractive than advertising it as
5dBi. What fun would that be? Gain should probably be specified at the connector, whether that be at the base of the antenna, or at the end of the coax, but ... There it is. There are other resellers offering the identical antenna (it appears) and also quote 5 dBi. pacwireless was one. It seems like the overall gain is within the margin of error when looking at a Netstumbler graph, but I have been able to catch signal that wouldn't work without it.
You are the connector is infact broken, part of it broke off today while I was messing around with it. As for the range issue I believe it is a issue with netstumbler and my card. For some reason it gives me -10db all the time for the range reading. Oh well I guess I'll find a better antenna and see if that helps.
Yep. I've broken so many of the flimsy connectors that I started looking for alternatives. The problem is not jack breakage when the connector is installed. I break the plug on the pigtail by throwing them in my toolbox, briefcase, of junk drawer. I also break the plug when I carelessly insert them at an angle. Basically, the connector sucks.
Here's one solution:
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've done the same thing but use an ordinary SMA instead of an R-SMA.
You are the connector is infact broken, part of it broke off today while I was messing around with it. As for the range issue I believe it is a issue with netstumbler and my card. For some reason it gives me -10db all the time for the range reading. Oh well I guess I'll find a better antenna and see if that helps.
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