Straightforward out-of-the-box solution for extending WiFi range

Yeah, that's how these ones work. If you're happy with that, then crack on, but from your original description it didn't sound appropriate to me.

alexd

Assuming all that Ubiquiti have done here is turn up the power, that's just silly. If they've put in an antenna with more gain, then that makes more sense as the gain would be reciprocal, unlike just turning up the amp.

It's all very well shouting at your clients, but if they can't shout back then it's no use. In other words, you may just go from not being able to see the AP when looking for wireless networks, to being able to see it, but not connect it, because the AP can't hear you trying to connect.

alexd

Naah. I *wish* I worked for Ubiquiti though, as I really like that they make equipment that is *powerful* and easy to use!

I'm really salivating now over the UniFy access point wifi extender:

A friend and I installed one at a neighbor's house today, and the WiFi range was FANTASTIC! It went to every single room in the house!

We even turned off the SSID from the Netgear home broadband router, because it was no longer needed, except to be used simply as a wired switch for the access point and desktop computer.

Heh heh ... I *wish* I worked for Ubiquiti! But, if I did, I'd probably know what I was doing! :)

Yes. And no. Depends on what you mean by "mobility".

I've tried the classic USB WiFi range extenders, for example, and their advantage is small size (some are dongles, which don't even need AC power while others are small boxes about the size of a pack of playing cards which also need 120VAC).

The problem I had with these classic range extenders is that they were miserable to set up on Linux. Absolutely horrid support for the Linux drivers. The reason is that they're consumer equipment; and the consumer is on Windows or Mac, for the most part.

So, *for you*, these $100 solutions (give or take $25) *should* work fine to extend the range of your laptop for a few hundred feet.

On the other hand, the solution I tested out, costs the same (roughly), as that consumer gear, but, the Nanobridge feed horn solution has far more gain (both in the transmitter and in the antenna) than the puny consumer gear.

The beauty of the Ubiquiti equipment is that it costs the same as the consumer gear (give or take a few). But, it's far more powerful.

Personally, I think we're all idiots for buying the consumer gear, mostly because it's too expensive for too little gain, so everyone has to extend the range with even more crappy consumer gear.

Yes. You are correct. My results depend on reasonable aiming.

Here is a picture of my ubiquiti feed horn and wires:

That is a 23dBM radio with a 3dBi antenna, which, if you find that kind of gain in consumer equipment at any price, I'll be amazed.

That's 26dBm of gain, which is 400 milliwatts of power (EIRP).

Now look at these four screenshots, taken during my testing:

Notice the signal strength with the tail pointed toward the router was a whopping -38dBm! (that's huge!)

When I tested it, at my house, connected to my laptop ethernet port, I pointed the tail end of this Nanobridge M2 at the home broadband router from one floor away, and got fantastic signal strength, which you can also read on the unit itself by user-settable LEDs:

When I pointed the tail *away* from my router, it still had a connection strength of -61dBm, and, as I twisted the nanobridge feedhorn around, I obtained values in between.

Now, let's compare that to the Lenovo laptop, which has a high end Intel Centrino N-spec WiFi card: $ lspci SHOWS: Intel Corporation Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 (rev 35)

$ iwconfig SHOWS the NIC has 15dBm transmit power. At 2.4GHz, that gets me a respectable -54dBm as shown by the results below:

Let's summarize:

1. The business-class laptop has a 15dBm NIC with probably about 1/2 dBi to (at most) 1dBi integral antenna, for a gain of about 16dBm; it garnered a signal strength of -54dBm.
2. Turning off that WiFi NIC, and attaching the 23dBM + 3dBi Nanobridge M2 feedhorn to the laptop Ethernet port, I get a signal strength of -38dBm when the antenna is aimed correctly - which is a stupendous 16dBm more signal than with the internal laptop card. Since every 3dB is a doubling of power, that's 2x2x2x2x2=32 times more signal strength!
3. However, with the feedhorn tail purposefully pointed AWAY from the router, I still get a respectable signal strength of -61dBM, but, that signal strength is four times less than what I had at the laptop without the feedhorn.

So, yes. You are correct. The signal strength *does* depend on aiming; but, when it's aimed right, you can easily get thirty times the signal strength than your (high end) laptop has alone.

And, best of all, there is absolutely no need for *any* drivers! This is more important for folks like me who are on Linux, than it is for Windows or Mac users - but - it's still nice to know that there are absolutely no drivers needed - since the interface is via the standard Ethernet port of your laptop and the web interface to the radio.

YMMV

Ah. Alignment, while problematic with consumer equipment, is absolutely beautiful with this professional equipment!

Let me count the ways ...

Notice I'm *not* using the dish that comes with the Nanobridge M2 radio. I'm just using this feedhorn and the POE power supply and an Ethernet cord connected to the laptop, so, my antenna is 3dBi (which isn't all that directional) as opposed to 18dBi with the dish (which is still not all that directional):

Even so, notice that the feedhorn has a set of LEDs (which the user can configure) which tell you instantly what the signal strength is at any one moment:

Also bear in mind, that antenna installers are often in precarious situations on top of poles and trees and the like, so, there is, in addition, a visual signal strength meter, as shown here:

And, notice the unchecked box in that last screenshot: "Alignment Beep" which beeps like Sputnik telling you the signal strength even if you had your eyes closed.

Lastly, notice that the main page of the web interface to the radio also shows you the signal strength and quality metrics:

Point is, when you're connecting to an access point that you can barely see with $3,000 Steiner binoculars, alignment is everything.

So, rest assured, you'll *know* exactly where the access point is in any situation that you're in. So, it won't be hard to point the feedhorn at the AP, although it might require holding it there to keep it pointed.

I would think, at a distance of, oh, say, 300 to 500 feet from a typical Starbucks-style access point, that you would just need to be pointed generally in the same direction; but I would need to test this on the road (with an inverter in my car) to be sure.

We're getting ten times the gain here ... and, bear in mind, we're *not* using the 18dBi dish that came with the Nanobridge M2.

I'm just using the 3dBi feedhorn alone, without that dish. Why? Because the dish would be too big to carry in my laptop bag! Plus it would be too big to set up on a Starbucks coffee table!

Given that we're just using the feedhorn, let's compare the specs of my Lenovo laptop against that of the Nanobridge M2 feedhorn.

Looking up the specs for the antenna gain on my Lenovo W510 laptop, I cant' find a spec on the antenna gain, but I see that they list all their laptops at no more than 3dBi (I suspect it's about 1/2 dBi to 1dBi, like most laptops - but I don't know):

The antenna gain on the Nanobridge M2 feedhorn isn't published either, but the Nanobridge web server itself reports it as 3dBi:

The iwconfig command tells me that the laptop NIC is transmitting at 15dBm of power:

While, we know from the specs, that the Nanobridge feedhorn transmits at 23dBm maximum power.

Given that, and assuming the antenna gain figures above, we are comparing:

LAPTOP = 15dBm + 1dBi = 16dBm (40 milliwatts) FEEDHORN = 23dBm + 3dBi = 26dBm (400 milliwatts)

Notice the feedhorn is ten times more powerful than the laptop alone. Now, let's compare that with my real-world test results:

LAPTOP gets -55dBm (0.003 microwatts)

FEEDHORN gets -39dBm (0.1 microwatts)

This is two orders of magnitude more power, in my real-world test! For the same cost as consumer equipment, which isn't as powerful.

I'm not sure I understand. I'm not using the 15dBi dish. I'm just using the 23dBm feedhorn and it's integrated 3dBi antenna.

I connect just the feed horn to the laptop Ethernet port and turn off the laptop's internal WiFi card.

The feedhorn has no problem pointing at the access point, as I described in another post, because the feedhorn is designed, from the start, to be easily aligned to an antenna that is

20 miles way.

So, aligning the feedhorn to an access point inside a coffee shop that is only, say, a half mile away, is trivial.

Hi Amanda,

It's not so much that I'm disappointed with the antenna on my laptop (which probably has a gain of about 1/2 to 1dBi), that I'm wanting to get my laptop to connect to an access point that is as far as a mile or two away.

In that case, there's no hope that the laptop can connect. It's just not designed to connect more than a few hundred feet.

However, the Nanobridge M2 is designed to connect to an access point that is as far as ten to twenty miles away.

So, with just the feedhorn, it seems I should be able to extend the laptop's range at least to a half mile, to maybe a mile.

I have to test this though - but it seems clear that the feedhorn would easily allow the laptop range to be extended to a few hundred feet (at the very least).

PS: I don't know how much you can change the power of the Linksys WRE54G with DD-WRT. I suspect the router default is around 18dBm (like most consumer routers) with a default antenna of something like 5dBi - so the range would depend on how much DD-WRT allows you to change the transmit power - and whether or not you replace the default antenna with a more directional antenna.

QUESTION: Do you know the dBm & dBi specs for that router and what DD-WRT can change with respect to the dBm and whether the antenna is easily removed and replaced?

Hi Dave,

I disagree.

My contention is that the pro radios I'm using are just about the same price as a high-end consumer router - yet - their power is tremendously higher in the pro equipment (which is designed to be cheap & powerful).

To make matters worse, it's actually pretty hard to walk into Fryes to pick out a home broadband router, and to find the antenna and transmitter gain listed on the box. I've tried, It's damn near impossible.

You know why?

I don't; but, I suspect it's because they're all very weak (probably around

15 to 18dBm with something like 3 to 6 dBi antennas).

So, I agree with you that, to get higher-gain consumer routers, you're going to pay through the nose, simply because it's really hard to shop intelligently.

Luckily, the gain figures are all published for the pro equipment, since gain is almost everything when your access point is twenty miles away.

So, my key contention, which is not intuitive, is that the pro equipment is actually just about the same price as the consumer equipment, but, it's vastly more powerful.

Take, for example, this $70 MIMO 802.11n access point which you wire to your modem (or to your router or to a switch):

It will knock the pants off anything I can find at Fryes at the same price. :)

Here's the datasheet:

I challenge someone to find a more powerful consumer radio in the same price range! Note: The UAP-LR is 27dBm + 3dBi = 30dBm (1 Watt)

PS: No, I don't work for Ubiquiti - although I wish I did. :)

Hmmmm.... we're talking hundreds of feet greater range.

Just putting a router in a more advantageous spot within an office isn't going to get you a few hundred feet greater range, in most cases.

It's not a bad idea, of course; but we're talking a goal of orders of magnitude greater range here ...

If you're talking about the test I ran, which extended the range of the laptop (as opposed to extending the range of the router), I had turned off the laptop's internal radio with the hardware switch on the side of the laptop.

So, in *my* tests, the only radio was the Nanobridge M2 feedhorn which was tied to the laptop's Ethernet port.

So, from the laptop's perspective, there was no radio. There was just a 'wired' ethernet connection.

I bought these for a customer to connect two buildings because the labor to run an outdoor aerial cable was more than installing the wireless link. ^_^

TDD

You mean you turned the radio off? SSID can be hidden or broadcast. I never heard turning off SSID> Unify is pretty new models. Another DIY source is Mikrotek which may cost less.

We used the Unify $100 6 Watt (yes, 6 Watt!) access point (they call it Long Range). It gave 5 bars to all the Apple equipment for the first time ever, in that house, anywhere they wanted it.

Turned out, we moved it, so, now they changed the router setup to have both the SSID from the router being the same as the SSID from the access point.

That the access point overpowers the signal of the router (which is on a different non-overlapping channel) doesn't seem to adversely affect them.

Hi, Do you use inSSIDer pro version or even free version? I think having same SSID is not good. Won't it create confusion when connecting?

Maybe we should broadcast something so people don't land on a used channel. 6 Watts spread spectrum? Maybe. Unifi?

Hi Tony,

So far they haven't reported any problems.

The Unifi AP-LR was set up at a neighbor's home, so, I don't have a scan for it (that scan above is from my home, because I was looking for a distant WiFi channel 9 interference source that was showing up in a spectrum analysis run from my rooftop radio):

What I like about the Ubiquiti equipment is sheer POWER! Those access points are 6 Watts! Compare that to the puny 1/10th of a Watt of your typical home broadband router.

And, these access points mount like a C02 detector, either on the wall or on the ceiling, and, they don't need anything but an Ethernet cable connected to them (as the power supply is at the other end of the Ethernet cable).

So, for extending WiFi range at home, I am learning all I can about these things, since they seem to be the right price and power and they seem to kick consumer equipment's butt! :)

As for the Android tools to track WiFi access points and SSIDs, I have InSSIDer freeware on my Android phone and on the laptop.

On Android, I also use WiFi Analyzer, which, I like better than InSSIDer. There's also "WiFi Signal Strength", which gives tabular reports.

Unfortunately, I don't seem to have the technical expertise to get WiFi Stumbler (aks Kismet, I think) & pcap capture working to tell me useful information yet inside those packets grabbed over the air, so, that's my next WiFi project when I get around to it.

6 Watts only goes so far ...

The houses out here are on 40-acre zoning, so, if you have 79 acres, you can only build one house. Even though it's Silicon Valley, it's way up in the mountains above, so, the 6 Watts "shouldn't" be a problem for this neighbor (who is on over 25 acres and her neighbors are similarly far apart).

As for those 6 Watts ...

I know that *my* rooftop radio has a 28dBm transmit power plus a 24dBi antenna gain, which gives me an EIRP of 52dBm, which is a whopping

158 Watts!

So, we're all radiating out here ... :)

In fact, most of my neighbors have the same equipment as I have, and, even with all that power bouncing around, my spectrum analysis scans show signals which all seem to be in the low 10% usage range...

I'm not sure what that really means to someone who knows what they are doing, but, I *think* it means that our bands are not crowded, although it would be nice to see what other people get for % Usage.

There are pros and cons to both arguments: using the same SSID on multiple AP's (on different channels, of course), versus using different SSID's.

When I set up systems for other people, I use the same SSID much more often than not because it reduces confusion. Most of the people I deal with are

50-90 years old, so having a single SSID to remember is easier for them. Mobility, as in roaming, is usually not a consideration because they tell me they always use their laptop in THIS room and they always use their tablet in THAT room, etc.