Coax cable for Wi-Fi PCI Adapter

There is a thread titled "Cheap wifi antennas" on 6/19/06 that you should go back to read, that card has a RP-SMA connector.

panel antannas because they are directional.http://www.hyperlinktech.com/web/antennas_2400_in.php

A few. I find

has nice listings, but a minimum $100 order. Look under Cables & Pigtails.

sells at retail, and might be able to help you identify the antenna that you need.

An astute observation for a common situation. I would say that's RP-SMA, a very common connector.

A few people have done that with some success. Someone added a reflector to the stock antenna at the same time:

Liebermann suggests that there is something not quite right with this photo, but the concept is good. The antenna here is an EZ-10 from (I would have used the EZ-12, myself) But, oddly enough, for the price of the chunk of cable, you might be able to buy a directional antenna. I have used the "Hawking HAI6SDA Directional

6dBi 2.4GHz Antenna" with good success on a Netgear WG311 PCI card. $20-30.

The one I bought fit the Netgear, and had an adapter that fit RP-TNC.

Sorry, the spacing in the above links made the links unuseable. I will repost

There is a thread titled "Cheap wifi antennas" on 6/19/06 that you should go back to read, that card has a RP-SMA connector.

I like panel antannas because they are directional.

Gordon hath wroth:

Sure. It's called a coax "jumper".

See:

No RP-TNC to RP-TNC jumper. You'll need to decide what length cable you need, and what diameter coax is appropriate. A good rule of thumb is that 6dB coax loss is good for cutting your range in half. Roughly, the losses for common small diameter coax cables are: Coax loss/ft RG-174 .75 RG-316 .38 LMR-100 .23 LMR-240 .13 I would keep the total attenuation down below 3dB if possible.

As Clarence Dold suggested, you can get a better directional antenna with coax cable extension, for about the price of just the extension. The stock rubber ducky antenna is NOT a very wonderful antenna (2dBi gain at best). For a fixed location pointing at one access point, directional antennas are always a better idea.

Linksys uses RP-TNC for their access points. However, the WMP54G PCI card uses RP-SMA to conserve space. Therefore, you need need either an RP-SMA extension cable, or a replacement antenna plus cable.

I bought one a hawking antenna this weekend on sale for 10 bucks at Fry's (normally 20) . It raised the signal strength from 2 bars to 5. I was amazed. Of course ymmv.

Dennis

Linksys have an SMA RP connector on the PCI card, I have a linksys WMP54GS myself. Try the antenna base from here:

If you can mount the router away from walls (inc stud) you should be OK.

My PC is tucked into a little cubby and I had a signal strenth of between 38% and 54%. I bought one myself and the signal improved by over 1/3 and I typically got 68% - 78%. Cable is 1m long but they dose cable by the meter as well.

Service is excellent BTW and he sells antenna as well if you want to upgrade.

I have a WRT54GS router and upgrading the firmware made a lot of difference. I use channel 13 (prev had 11 channels) and get mid 90s reception. I don't use the linksys software, XP manages the connection and I find I have almost no breaks in the connestion. With he linksys drivers I would have short breaks in the connestion which were annoying. It seemed to be renewing the association with the router when the connection was idle.

Mike

Thanks to all who responded. I bought a 7 foot long Cantenna Antenna Extension Cable at CompUSA and placed it between the Wi-Fi card and its antenna. This lets me position the antenna in a clear area. It works very well and I consider the problem solved.

This cable has RPSMA male and female connectors that match my LinkSys WMP54G PCI Adapter. This has boosted the signal to a very usable level of around 54% and it seems very steady. I even picked up another wireless network SSID that seems to be coming from two houses down the street. I didn't try to log onto this network, but I will talk with the owner and let them know that they are open.

may i ask how you know it is two houses away ??

I've gone through a process of elimination with all the closer houses. Of course it might be from a greater distance...who knows?

Why? They may actually want to leave it open, if only to let other folks share the bandwidth.

Could be something obvious like an SSID labelled "Smith" and knowing the Smith's live two doors down. I found one in our marina, let's say it was named "Finch". I searched for that last name, in the current zip code, on switchboard.com. I noticed there was someone with that last name listed at an address that had a pretty good line of sight to the marina. Thus it's reasonable to conclude they're one and the same. Same deal goes at home, there's an SSID with the same name as a neighbor's teenager. Not all that hard to figure out.

-Bill Kearney

"Bill Kearney" hath wroth:

Obvious doesn't always work. My systems have the street address of the access point as the SSID. No way to miss something that obvious. While installing a pair of WAP54G bridge radios in downtown Santa Cruz last week, I noticed someone walking around with a PDA and a small panel antenna. He was blundering around the street outside the store where I was working. He turned out to be someone I had exchanged email on a local wireless mailing list, but I had never met in person. He was trying to build a map of local Wi-FI installations and was having trouble finding the one I was currently installing. I pointed out that the SSID was the address, which aparently escaped his notice.

Moral: Obvious is not always sufficient.

A great many people, when they see something that obvious, tend to think it is a trick devised to mislead the gullible.

My guess about the signal coming from the second house down the street was based on the fact that I've touched base with everyone in the houses adjacent to mine, and it ain't none o' them. The second house down the street is the only other one that could send a signal to my house without having to pass through some very heavy tree foliage. But, I still haven't gone down there and talked with the owners/occupants of that house. This signal is WEP encrypted, so I doubt they intend to offer their Wi-Fi as a free neighborhood service.

There really isn't much danger of encroachment in this neighborhood, although it could happen anywhere, I guess. Most of my neighbors don't even know what Wi-Fi means.

When you make something idiot-proof, the world goes and builds a better idiot.

"Bill Kearney" hath wroth:

This was a recent university graduate so I'll assume that idiocy is not the problem. The problem is that obvious clues are not so obvious if one is not expecting them. Trying to decode SSID's and guess their owner has been somewhat of a challenge. With the time honored practice of security by obscurity, SSID's tend to be rather obscure and cryptic. When someone runs across one that is clear, concise, and obvious, it's often lost in the noise. Also, he was using a PDA running Kismet, were the on screen display is rather difficult to read. He apparently didn't notice that the SSID was the address and was mentally trying to decode the meaning when I interrupted.

Incidentally, in the past, I did some work with RFC3825. RFC 3825 - Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol Option for Coordinate-based Location Configuration Information

's primary use is for E911 caller location via 802.11 VoIP phones. The access point is pre-loaded with the latitude, longitude, and altitude/floor number (LCI). Clients using the access point obtain their location via DHCP. When making an emergency call, the stored location is then communicated to the PSAP (public safety access point).