Increasing wireless internet signal between buildings

I have wireless Internet in my office. I would like to send the signal over to my house, which is about 120 feet away. I've tried a LinkSys Wireless G-Router, which provides a steady but rather weak signal when used with a Hawking USB directional dish. I've also been reading about a signal boosting device called a Super Cantenna, which looks like a large Pringles can. Would it help in my situation? Should I use the Hawking or the Cantenna or both? Thanks. Mike

Reply to
tenplay
Loading thread data ...

A reflector for your router will increase the signal significantly. Use it with the Hawking.

formatting link

Reply to
curly Bill

Uh oh, should work fine UNLESS you have tinted/solar radiation protection that most office windows have, that also tend to block/attentuate radio signals.. Do your office windows open, or are they the sealed type (that most likely also block the signal).. Can you try from outside rather than thru the glass?

Reply to
Peter Pan

"Peter Pan" hath wroth:

There are now several different types of window tints, films, dyes, and coatings. The common aluminized mylar coating will block RF quite nicely. The ceramic coatings pass RF easily. The problem is that they're rather expensive.

Most such ceramic coatings are used on automobiles and homes. I haven't seen any on office buildings yet. I couldn't find anything on the RF characteristics. If it trashes cell phone reception, it's probably a metalized film coating.

I once had to deal with getting a 2.4GHz wireless link through an office building with tinted windows. It was like trying to go through a brick wall. I ended up with a roof mounted antenna and radio, powered by PoE.

Then, there's RF blocking wallpaper:

Sigh.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Don't know what type exactly, but the premade tinted ones on many of the new office buildings nowadays (not a film, but something in the glass to minimize sun fade, and the windows don't even open) usually block radio signals, just noticed a few years back, was in the dentists office, and my pda only saw one ap, but when I went outside to smoke, it saw 38! For the last few years i've been doing the same sort of thing at other offices, and it seems that in many of the newer buildings, get very limited signal inside, walk outside and there are lots... not scientific at all, just fired a neuron when the op talked about about a very poor signal at 120 feet thru the glass with a directional USB device... Doesn't seem to happen with older office buildings that have the older opening windows...

Generically, I wonder what effect that sort of glass would have tying to do a wireless link between buildings thru the windows....

Reply to
Peter Pan

Have a q that I can't find a US firm that supplies it (only a uk firm that won't ship to the us), basically instead of radio, it is a laserlink system, much faster than wifi, (does gigabit ethernet ttp://

formatting link
and good for off the shelf up to 5kilometers...

At any rate, got me thinking, I have a USB LED keyboard light, and can jumper that to my laser pointer for power, so why not do a USB ethernet/laser link? (no clue on how to receive it cheaply tho).... Seems like it would be pretty cool, and if can be made cheaply, would solve a whole lot of problems.... I have seen fiber optic stuff for networks, so it must be feasible to convert network to laser and back, but why not do it without the fiber optic cable?

Reply to
Peter Pan

That's FSO (free space optical). I've used (and built) a few of those. If you think wi-fi is weird and marginal, wait until you try FSO. Beam spreading, speckle, dust dispersion, fog absorption, beam wandering, insect obstruction, light pollution, sun overload, etc. Also, don't ask the price:

I've used hardware by PlainTree:

I wanted to use Canon, but the prices were outrageous:

There are two basic types, LED and laser. LED is cheaper, laser goes farther. Speeds are about the same.

Well, there's a big difference between keying a cheap laser on and off, and shoving 100Mbits/sec through an optical link. Much of the magic is in the optics. The rest is in the modulation methods, which tend toward the exotic.

It is possible to take optical Ethernet fiber bridge, and replace the two interconnecting fiber optic cables, with a pair of lenses. I used binoculars. I only needed about 100ft range so I assumed it was a no brainer. (It wasn't). Keeping the focus stable and accurate to the emitter/detector is difficult. I built a pair using binoculars, which worked just fine, but took considerable machine work and subsequent swearing during the alignment. Have a visible high power LED or green laser available for alignment. The swearing resumed after the first rain, when moisture condensed inside the binoculars and rotted everything.

Here's a do-it-thyself project that does this if you wanna play:

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

I was thinking of Datapoint LightLink. Late 70's, early 80's, Arcnet at

2.5Mbps over about a mile... Union76, I think, had them all over their campus in Houston.
Reply to
dold

Argh. LightLink was about 1980. Not much on the web about it.

In about 1993, I had to throw together a wireless link between the local hospital and the cheaper offices across the freeway. I wanted to use Pre-802.11 900MHz wireless, but the hospital declared it a "radiation hazard" and didn't want it anywhere near the patients. So, I went with optical.

The system consisted of two pairs of 10" dia plastic Fresnel lenses and IR emitter/detector pairs. The spot size was about 8ft wide at about 1000ft range (0.5 degrees). The problem was that every morning, during the start of rush hour, the link would go down. I eventually got an IR viewer going and discovered that the spot was moving about a foot and becoming very smeared when it was failing. That corresponded to when the beam was shooting through the turbulence created by the rising warm freeway traffic air and the cold morning air. I never really solved the problem, but reduced it enough so that nobody noticed. FSO is soooooooo much fun.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.