I'm going to need to communicate over a fairly short distance - a mximum of 50 feet as the crow flies, but the signal will have to go through a total of seven walls to get to the back porch. The house was built in 1972, so I assume it's just standard 2x4 studs and wallboard.
I'm looking at a Toshiba E35-S2171 laptop which contains an Atheros card, and either the regular or HP Buffalo router. Will either of the Buffalo routers work in that situation? If they both are likely to work, I'd just as soon get the regular router and save a few bucks, if that sounds reasonable.
Well, it appears you're in Tusla Oklahoma. I dunno what they use for building materials in tornado alley. If I believe the tornado movies, the houses are made from kindling and cardboard. If I believe the tornado safety web sites, the houses are made of prestressed concrete tilt up walls. Since you want to go outside to the back porch, some clue as to the exterior construction would be nice.
I think you mean L35-S2171, maybe.
Probably not. You may not have foil backed insulation inside the interior walls, but you probably have it on the outside walls. If you have lots of windows, there's some hope. However, my rule of thumb is that anything over about 2-3 walls is a lost cause. What will happen is that you will probably be able to find a location on the back porch where it will work, but you will not be able to maintain the connection as reflections and multipath conspire to ruin your day.
If you have a hip roof, you might consider installing the wireless access point in the ceiling, so it only has one wall (the outside wall) to go through.
Kinda. From the router the straight line would go across the corner of the next room, then across the hall, then across two back-to-back bathrooms, then across another bedroom, then across the family room to the back porch.
It's just a regular house. No concrete walls. :-) the exterior wall probably does have some foil, but it's mostly windows across that part.
Yes. But it's actually the 2174, which I found only on the BestBuy site. But I'm sure the wireless is the same as the
2171.
Well it that's the case, maybe I should just forget about this idea. I thought it would do better than that.
If you mean in the attic, that wouldn't work in the summer. Way too hot up there.
i have a US Robotics MaxG (model 5461) wireless router and i can access it's signal with my dell laptop's built-in wi-fi card from anywhere in my split-level (3 levels) home including our back porch which is the farthest point from the home office. between the home office and back porch are several walls (less than 7) but one of them is solid concrete (used to be part of the rear wall of the home...the porch/florida room was added later).
if i were you i'd try the regular router first. just be sure it can be returned or exchanged. if it doesn't work to your satisfaction you can always return/exchange it for something else.
Is it possible to just put the antenna in the attic? That would involve some kind of coax from the router's antenna connector, fished up through the wall, connecting to an antenna mounted in the attic. Would it be too lossy? I have no idea what would be involved in designing this, but I would think that if terminated properly, so that there are no reflections, it might be possible. On the other hand, it might depend on whether both send and receive use the same antenna normally.
The obvious question is that if you only have to go 50ft, why not just run 50ft of CAT5 ethernet cable to the back porch instead of 25ft of coax cable to the attic?
25ft of coax cable is not all that lossy. The two available types are LMR240 (about 1/4" diameter) and LMR400 (about .410" diameter). Losses for 25ft would be about 4.3dB and 2.0dB respectively. At 50ft range, either coax will work.
See:
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pre-cut and connectorized pieces.
I'm not sure exactly what to recommend for an antenna. If all you have to cover is the back porch, then some kind of directional panel antenna will be the cheapest and easiest to install. If you have to also cover the entire house, an omnidirectional antenna might work best. Hard to tell from here.
Wallboard in the 70s was beginning to use metal foil for energy efficiency. If you have foil backed wallboard and it's installed correclty you're likely S.O.L. direct RF connection.
So, run CAT5 to the back porch and use wireless in the other spots (assuming they also don't go through 7 walls).
Actually, satellite grade RG-6/u will sorta work. I've used it when I needed to be cheap or creative. The 50 to 75 ohm mismatch is not that horrible. About 1.5dB maximum. The cable loss is 15dB/100ft (about the same as LMR-240) at 2.4Ghz so your 25ft run will have about 5dB loss. You will probably need to make some custom pigtails from Type-F to R-TNC or R-SMA or use multiple adapters. Thats 3/4th of your power gone up in cable loss, but there's enough left to function on the back porch. However, I doubt if one antenna will cover both the back porch and the other "spots" inside the house. It really depends on the antenna type and pattern.
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