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Wifi and Windows...

Ok, on the 2nd story of my house in my office I have a WRT54G v6.0. It's running DDWRT... now, in my bedroom about 40 feet from my office I have another WRT54G v1.0 running DDWRT in Wireless Bridge mode as well. have a large glass patio door and looking out of it you can see my workshop, which is a steel pole shed (finished, insulated, etc) about

250 feet away line of site, no obstructions.

As far as wifi signal, I can only get about halfway to the shop with a laptop and Netstumbler before the signal isn't good enough. With the router outside of the window, I can get to the door of the shop.

So I bought a 11db flat panel 30deg antenna and tried that. Through the window I can make it about 3/4 of the way to the shop. Haven't tried outside yet. also haven't really tried aiming it yet at all.

Here's the funny thing. In my basement (2 floors down from the main router) I have a Wii and a desktop with a wifi card. On the Pc I get Great signal (all 5 bars in M$ network viewer) and the Wii gets a good signal too. This is through at least 2 floors, maybe even a couple walls.

i plan on trying the directional antenna from the repeater outside, but I thought it would have gave me a little more distance than it did, even through a window. The window actually seems to block more, or just as much as walls.

My goal is to get Wifi to my shop without anything else besides my directional antenna. If not, I'm praying ethernet over power will work. ( have the 102s from Netgear, just don't have power to the shop yet to try it)

I just find it curious that outside of the window I get at least 50% better range than inside of the window. Are some windows just more reflective?

Reply to
legbuh
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Oh yes they are. We've got a sun room with some UV coating on the glass that almost completely blocks WiFi. We've got an L-shaped house and there's a WiFi access point at the inner corner of the L. There's a door in the sun room that's in direct line of sight between a table and the access point. Close the door and I barely get 1 bar. Open the door and I get all 5.

Your solution for covering the shed would probably be best served with an external directional antenna. And that wouldn't allow local wireless coverage. Given that access points are relatively cheap these days you'd probably be best served just getting another one. Have one covering the office and then the other handling a directional signal to the shed. Just make sure the shed's construction isn't also going to block the signal. If that's the case then you'd have to look at a similar solution to bridge the signal. But at that point you'd really have to question the whole idea...

-Bill Kearney

Reply to
Bill Kearney

that's how I have things set up now. One AP in the office which actually covers the whole house nicely. The second AP running as a bridge is just to "shoot" wifi at the shed. So, I'm going to have to play around to see how well it will work.. it is a steel building, but hopefully the 11db directional will penetrate it.

There's always EoP, if that works.. I've used it before in the house and it works pretty good.

Reply to
legbuh

Just two asides.. First, sliding glass patio doors are the absolute worst for wifi signals (some sort of UV blocker in/on the glass also stops wifi signals) while your wireless goal is laudable, depending on where you live (winter snow, summer foliage, will really mess with wireless) Second, since you obviously will have power to that pesky building, look at powerline networking.. For ours we had a wap/wouter inside our steel snow roof outbuilding, netgear powerline networking ( up to 85 mbps

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(plenty fast enuf for the internet with bursts up to 16 - about $130 for both ends, they are the 104's, not those pesky 102's that are problematical, they don't even sell em anymore), and just used one connected from the output of the inside wap/router and the other to the router input (not the wan) of the unit in the outbilding (had both wired and wireless that way, linksys wrt54g - $48 at walmart, went with no seamless roaming, different ssid and dhcp on)

Reply to
Peter Pan

Some, maybe even most, but not mine. My best measured signal strength is off line, through a sliding glass door, rather than straight line through the adjacent wall.

Reply to
dold

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