Omni directional antenna recommendations?

On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 16:49:57 -0700, MrBill wrote in :

I think you're going to have trouble getting through those Adobe walls, so buy antennas with a solid return capability.

Bear in mind that high gain omni antennas trade vertical beam width for gain, so the more gain the more necessary it will be to have all wireless units at a given elevation.

My own recommendation would be to go with the same manufacturer as your wireless devices; e.g., Linksys HGA7S or HGA7T (as appropriate).

are there only 2 houses on this map - or 3 houses ? a single line between 2 pts, or a triangle ? if just 2, then why omni, go with a gain reflector at each end..

Good tip - I can see that putting an omni at a higher elevation won't help at all.

Sounds good. Obviously the 7S or 7T relates to the connector. Mine looks like a BNC connector, but it's screw-on rather than bayonette mount. Would this be the "S" or "T"?

There are 2 houses on my lot.

The network will consist of 3 PC's. One is connected directly to the Gateway and the other 2 will be connected by wireless network adapters. The network adapter is only 15' or so from the gateway so no help is needed. The network adapter in the 2nd house will be about

75' away, it is not set up yet. When it is, lines drawn between the 2 adapters and the gateway will form a triangle.

Sounds good, of course I should need a reflector in the 2nd house only. Can you recommend a good 2.4 GHz gain reflector?

How far is it to that "other" adapter? I run about 60 feet through a couple of sheetrock/pressedboard siding walls with one reflector and a normal laptop card, which gets "excellent" signal according to WinXP. Another laptop card, not in the nominal direction that the reflector is aimed, is still quite serviceable. Directional antennas are not absolute beams. There are side lobes and back lobes.

What is on the far client? Can you put a directional antenna or reflector there? 75 feet of free air would be easy. Adobe is not so easy, but there might be some windows. My best shot is not a straight line, but offline through a window, and then also off line through a sliding glass door.

My favorites in this area of exploration:

Windsurfer EZ-12. I have used the "Hawking HAI6SDA Directional 6dBi 2.4GHz Antenna" with good success on a Netgear WG311 PCI card. $20-30.

Hawking and others have USB clients built in to antennas. That might be handy.

A cantenna with a USB dongle inside. The USB allows some freedom in position the dongle, which can then be used with all sorts of reflectors or cans. Bob's single can:

Clarence's double can, with a 10-24 nut soldered on as a tripod mount. I used the turnpoint calculator to decide where to poke the hole. have used a larger single can to access a hotpoint that was indoors a couple of blocks away with a stock antenna.

Miscellaneous reflective gadgets for USB dongles:

I have seen a cheap USB dongle sealed into a pill bottle that was then mounted to the exterior of a metal building.

You can go directional. The adapter that's only 15 feet away should still get fine signal. My laptop gets good signal 15 feet behind my EZ-12 reflector through an outside wall.

has pictures of some connectors. says that Linksys uses RP-TNC and RP-SMA. My BEFW11S4 is RP-TNC. I have purchased some things from Hyperlink, but they have a minimum $100 retail order. Others in this group like fab-corp.

On Thu, 16 Nov 2006 01:16:35 +0000 (UTC), snipped-for-privacy@XReXXOmniX.usenet.us.com wrote in :

That's not terribly meaningful unless the wireless adapter is under heavy load -- it's common for a wireless adapter to report good-excellent signal until it actually tries to transfer data, whereupon the signal level is downgraded to match reality.

I find a good indicator to be "Current Bandwidth" in perfmon.msc. Just now, my WG511 shows "excellent". That's a little hard to monitor, because I only see the popup balloon. Open the status monitor and I have 5 bars, and a speed of 54Mbps.

start-run-perfmon.msc + Performance Object = Network Numbers agree with dslreports. + Performance Object = TCP "current bandwidth"

ftp upload at 36KBpS, the current bandwidth stays at 54, ballon pops up as excellent. ftp download at 300KBpS, same.

Walking around, network idle, I see a momentary drop to 48, then 36. At that point, the balloon says "very good", then back to excellent, and the bandwidth is back to 54.

I would say that the balloon is a good quick indicator, your experience noted. Perfmon is better, and available to almost any user.

I also posted some NetStumbler observations a while ago.

this graph, the effect of the reflector is apparent.

On Thu, 16 Nov 2006 02:16:54 +0000 (UTC), snipped-for-privacy@XReXXOmniX.usenet.us.com wrote in :

That's a sample of one, and a rough one at that. You need to look at the difference between idle and under load, and test more than one adapter.

My experience is based on several different adapters and drivers. Many exhibit optimistic signal strength when idle, and a more accurate signal strength when under load and the driver has responded to the error rate by reducing speed, dropping from (say) "good" or even "excellent" to "low". Thus my recommendation is to take the signal strength with a grain of salt unless the adapter is under load.

snipped-for-privacy@XReXXOmniX.usenet.us.com hath wroth:

I agree with John and Clarence. You're going to have a difficult time going through two adobe walls. I help maintain a radio site with an attached private residence. The house is adobe walls and tile roof. The wireless access point is in the radio site. All attempts to get coverage inside the house have failed miserably. The adobe acts like a brick wall. Hell, it is a brick wall. You may find it necessary to use some other method of connection. At 75ft, you could probably run outdoor gel filled CAT5 cable. If there's a common power or phone line, look into those:

CATV: I'm not a big fan of Hyperlink Tech but they do have a good assortment of goodies. Fab-Corp is a good supplier. see: I'm not going to recommend a specific antenna type or model without some additional guesswork. Take the radios you currently own, with the stock antennas and try "drilling" through the adobe walls. If you get any kind of signal, grab some signal strength numbers. If possible, give an estimate of how many more dB of signal you need to establish a reliable connection. I suggest using Netstumbler on the client end to an access point on the other. Offhand, I don't think it's going to work unless you have common windows through the adobe. Think line of sight.

One ftp session seems like a load. Upload and download were both running at about spec for the cable modem.

I have tested "several" over the course of time in this environment, and others. More than you, perhaps.

I knew there was one more that you liked, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

I like the pictures of connectors and the pigtail-radio cross reference at Hyperlink Tech. I haven't bought anything from them since they started the $100 minimum.

I had a marginal connection from one desktop to my Linksys WRT54G, using the standard 2 dBi antenna. When I replaced one of the router's antennae to with a Linksys HGA7T, the connection improved a lot: from flaky downloads to solid, reliable, performance. The path is only about 50', but there are wooden walls and a 'fridge in the way.

FWIW, the antenna I replaced was vertical, like the D-Link (USB-connected) antenna on the troublesome desktop. The other WRT54G antenna is horizontal in my application, and did not need more radiated power.

I haven't received the PC for the other house yet, so I decided to run some tests using my wife's desktop PC which also uses a Linksys network adapter. Using the PCPitstop download speed test, I ran a number of tests with her PC in its normal location, about 15' from the router. This was the average:

Download speed: 1283 kilobits per second Test details: 1204 kilobytes downloaded in 7.511 seconds.

Then I move her PC into the other house and put it where the replacement PC will be located. This was the average:

Download speed: 927 kilobits per second Test details: 800 kilobytes downloaded in 6.91 seconds.

I don't think those speeds next door are bad at all, but one odd thing happened - when I rotated the Linksys network adapter 90 degrees, it lost connection to the network entirely. All things considered, I think that the connection could use some improvement. What I'm going to do is:

- Move the router to a location about 6' closer to the other house, unfortunately this is as far as I can move it. What is meaningful about this small move is that there will no longer be a comuter monitor between the router and the network adapter next door. The 6' reduction in distance should also help a bit.

- I'll purchase the HGA7T antenna, thanks for the recommendation John! Yes, the router with the new antennas and the network adapters will all be at the same elevation ASL.

I think this should take care of my problems. If not, I'll be back! :)

Thanks, MrBill

I've relocated my router about 6' closer to the 2nd house and I've installed the HGA7T antenna. Here's before and after numbers using the download bandwidth test on PCPitstop:

First test 11/17/2006 in main house: Download speed: 1283 kps

First test 11/17/2006 in 2nd house: Download speed: 927 kps (difficult to hold connection)

Relocated router closer to GH, added HGA7T, 11/27/06, main house: Download speed: 3253 kps

Relocated router closer to GH, added HGA7T, 11/27/06, 2nd house: Download speed: 3192 kps (connection is solid)

I had considered running CAT6 cable over to 2nd house if I couldn't get respectable wireless speed, but it looks like that won't be needed. Needless to say, I'm VERY pleased! :)

MrBill