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Hotspot preparation

Hello all,

I'm going to install a hotspot in about a week from now and have been planning to extend the service to the community buildings nearby. It's a netgear fwag114 based service and as there's not going to be any ADSL service until then I can't test it yet.

I'm hoping to extend the range to about 200ft from my home in all directions and I suspect I'll need an external antenna to do this. What eludes me is information on how such an antenna might be connected.

There's no visible means to connect an antenna to the base unit. If there was, I could expect to suffer a 7db signal loss thru a 10m cable to an omni rooftop antenna with a 9db gain.

What's the usual method of attaching one of these external antenna? Does it require that I buy an access point to 'drive' the antenna and to house it in the loft to minimise the cable length?

TIA Jeff

Reply to
Jeff Mowatt
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Consider using a different wap/router.. I have had the worst luck with netgear. The two I now use are the D-Link DI-624

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) has removeable/replaceable external screw off antennas, and/or the linksys WRT54G
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with the sveasoft upgrade to allow power increase from 28mw to 251 mw (increased range and no external antenna needed)
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Stock power is 28mw, the Svea firmware will let you boost that up to 251mw, costs a bit, but way less than an external antenna)

Reply to
Peter Pan

Have you considered using a second wap in repeater mode? You can leave your main stuff alone, but extend your range a bunch with a repeater. (I do that for multi-floor, multi buildings, loading docks, large areas etc) Turns out a wap is usually under $90, and is cheaper than cable and antennas (you do usually need AC power though, or at least extend the low voltage DC power cable, and if the device is outside, a weatherproof box )

Reply to
Peter Pan

Thanks Peter,

Maybe it would be better but I'm stuck with this product as it's the standard device for 'The Cloud'. Hopefully their support will help me through.

Jeff

Reply to
Jeff Mowatt

Boosting just the AP's power is unlikely to bring much benefit - what use is it having clients hear louder/further than the AP can hear the clients?

However having an improved antenna at just one end of the link will result in an improvement in the signals in both directions with the desired result because antennas are symmetrical and so performance is reciprocal.

Tony

Reply to
Anthony R. Gold

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