Signal through stone building

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Jeff Mowatt 21 years ago

Hi all,

I installed a netgear FWAG114 hotspot in my loft with the aim of reaching neighbouring buildings within 100m Surprisingly I have managed to connect indoors on all floors, which I don't need to do but the signal just outside is very weak. The building itself, constructed circa 1860 is solid stone with walls up to 18" thick and I'm wondering whether this is the major factor affecting transmission. There shouldn't be much interference as I'm in a valley where cell phones don't operate.

I'm wondering as I don't have access to the other buildings right now, whether it might be better a little further from the house where these walls don't fall in the "line of sight". Otherwise I might well need a wap with a dipole antenna for all round coverage, perhaps if not some building to building bridges in some cases. I'm try to work out if that's going to be economically viable.

A quick question. Though I can't seem to find any specific information, are all 802.11g devices compatible in that I might use equipment from other manufacturers to propagate my signal? I'm thinking CISCO which according to the Cisco logo on my Netgear box, is from the same stable and they have some reasonab;y priced equipment in comparison.

Regards,

Jeff

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Jeff Liebermann 21 years ago

Cell phones are not an issue because they're on different frequencies. Brick and stone are serious attenuators at 2.4Ghz. They will literally block the signal completely. This article may help explain:

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" of solid stone is good for about 12dB attenuation (or more). To put that in perspective, you're power gets cut in half for every 3dB of attenuation, and your range gets cut in half for every 6dB of attenuation. The wall will cut your range to 1/4th or less.

YES! Since you can't move the walls or drill through them, moving the radios to some approximation of line of sight will be a minimum requirement. A better antenna (or antennas) will also be a huge help.

Replacement antennas are common. Netgear supplies two antennas that my guess would be about 2dBi gain.

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suggest you leave one antenna in place to deal with local conenctions, and attach an external panel antenna pointed in the direction of the remote user in question. However, make sure your coax cable runs are as short as possible, and that you have line of sight to between the user and the panel antenna:

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In general, everything that's claimed to be 802.11g will talk to each other. However, the exceptions are a problem.

There are 802.11g enhancements such as Super-G, Turbot-G, and Afterburner, that are not universally compatible.
Repeaters and WDS bridges are always a problem. The standards are not terribly clear and implimentations vary. Some manufacturers have repeaters that don't even talk to their own hardware due to different chipsets being used. I assume this is what you mean by "propogate" the signal.

Are you thinking of a wireless repeater or WDS bridge? If so you need to make sure the manufactory support the product or at least the chipset used in the FWAG114. I can't tell from the insipid Netgear data sheet if it supports WDS. If so, methinks that's your best bet if you can find a WDS access point to act as a repeater through a hole in the wall. I'm not a big fan of repeaters and WDS bridges, but they do work. Methinks antennas and location are more important and useful. Here's more than you wanted to know about WDS:

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Jeff Mowatt 21 years ago

PS: I meant to say 3COM not Cisco, have relatively inexpensive kit.

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Robert Jacobs 21 years ago

Yes, all 802.11g products that are Wi-Fi certified should in theory work together. The only option that will not work most of the time are the so called speedboosts and such. You can not take advantage of thier 108Mbs ratings.

As far as your stone wall, yes they can block signals going to your external areas. You could just use outdoor APs and that would provide you with excellent outdoor coverage.

If wanting to go from one building to another then setup two nets, one in each building, buy an Outdoor AP for each building and bridge them together, making one large network.

Robert....

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