Need a stronger signal

Am surfing the net wireless, speed and connection are good but signal is "very weak". Someone told me there is a device that you place in your laptop that will pull in signal stronger. I heard that they sell this on pcmall.com. Does anyone know which item I should purchase to amplify signal on my end without having access to the router? Please post. notebook is hp zv5120us windows xp home

512 ram Thank you. Signal I connect to is linksys.
Reply to
Robert
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Jeff: Thanks for the advice. The one on pcmall was some kind of card that you put in the pcmcia? slot; that one was just a booster and did not have an antenna attached to it. Do you think anything like that would pull in the signal stronger?

Reply to
Robert

heres the link to pcmall - the item says lynksys g booster

My signal is weak; I am trying to "amplify" it.

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My friend said I could try changing channels by rt clicking the item in system tray?? was not able to figure out how to change channels.

Let me know if you think any of those items would be worthwhile(I am on someone else's connection fron their router) He also said I could buy a repeator. Let me know what you think, Jeff. Thank you.

Reply to
Robert

Linksys model number?

No. You cannot do that with infrastructure mode. The wireless access point controls the frequency. There's nothing you can do at the client end to change it. (That's not true for ad-hoc mode, but you're not using that).

I'll guess (again) that the Linksys G "booster" is a WRE54G "range extender". |

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personally do not like repeaters or similar contrivances. I also don't like power amplfiers. Each has problems which I don't wanna go into right now. I much prefer to improve signal strength with antennas. I (again) cannot offer any conclusions since I have no clue what wireless path looks like. Solutions depend heavily on topology (network layout) and line of sight.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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can't tell exactly what type of wireless card you have inside but it's probably a MiniPCI card which means you're going to have some difficulties attaching an external antenna. More on this later...

The device you're probably thinking of is an external laptop antenna. Something like this: |

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problem is that there's no easy way to attach the coax cable to the MiniPCI card without drilling a hole in the laptop for the coax cable. The MiniPCI wireless card also probably uses u-FL connectors, which are not very rugged and will destroy themselves if improperly handled. A good tug on the coax cable, and the connector is busted. I've seen people drill a hole in the laptop case and mount an SMA connector, and solder the coax to the board, but methinks that might be a bit extereme for a relatively new laptop.

The right way to do this is to add an external PCMCIA or USB wireless card that has external access to the RF connector and which will allow easy access for the antenna coax. Something like this kit: |

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that this is 802.11b and not 802.11g. There are other cards and kits that will do this. The basic idea is to get the coax cable out of the laptop without destroying the laptop. The rest is antenna design.

If this is too complex or expensive, you might wanna try a cheapo

802.11g USB dongle. The advantage is that you can extend the USB cable 16ft away from the laptop. Since there's no RF on the cable, there's no RF loss from the coax cable. The USB radio will give you more options in terms of locating the the radio, such as out a window or sitting on top of your head (I've seen it done). If you go shopping for one of these, try to get one that has an obvious tilt up antenna as the circuit board and sub-miniature antennas found in most of the tiny USB radios absolutely suck for antenna gain.

Much depends on the model number of the Linksys, the type of antenna used, and the number of walls and obstructions you have to go through between you and the Linksys. If you have no control over this wireless router, then you have to do all the improvements on your end. However, if you can do something about its location or antenna, you may be able to get away with nothing more than a bigger antenna or a simple repositioning of the wireless router.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Can you supply the exact URL's of what you're thinking of buying?

I hestitate to recommend anything until I know:

  1. What you're trying to accomplish.
  2. What you have to work with. Simply buying a bigger antenna, power amplifier, booster, or whatever is not going to do much good if you don't have line of sight, have tons of interference, or are dealing with excessive reflections.

I'll try to guess what you're suggesting. The PCMCIA card is probably a high power wi-fi card. This is a tolerable way of squeezeing some more range out of system, especially since they have an external antenna connector. However, it's the antenna that make the difference, not the card. I suspect it will help, but I can't tell how much or if the expenditure will be worthwhile.

I don't know what you mean by booster. The term has been abused to mean everything from a bi-directional power amplifier, store and forward repeater, or just a better antenna. I typed in "booster" into the PCMaul search page and only found a Hawkins MIMO repeater. I don't wanna speculate without knowing the specifics.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Ken: What do you think you're some kind of cop? You are a loser. Robert

Reply to
Robert

This is the same guy who on Dec 15 stated that it is NOT his wireless signal, that he is stealing it from a neighbor.

Reply to
ken

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