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Ok, so heres the deal. I have been a wire installer now for approx 9 years. Having just purchased a house that has not one but TWO seperate aditions it has made it necessary for me to use wireless technology to get internet access to my wife's PC in the living room.
I bought a Uniden 1000 WAP off the [H] forums for $20 shipped. I then purchased two MSI 802.11b PCI cards. One for my wife's PC and one for my Son's who had to give up his port in the Linksys router for the WAP.
My Son's room is right next to our bedroom and so he has a pretty good connection. The MSI graph shows >-50db and also says "Excellent" under link quality.
Well, my wife's comptuer is all the way across the house, through two sperate additions to the house (one of which is through a brick wall) and as you would expect she had a "Poor" link quality that hovered around -75db. So I said "Crap, now I gotta spend more money and get a better antenna or a repeater or something... *deep sigh*". Well, I did some searching on the internet and had pretty much decided I was gonna do a denty-moore beef stew cantenna and shoot a straight shot right to my wife's PC. This was gonna cost me about $30 for the pigtail, the N-connectors and the stew of course. Anyway I was looking for good places to buy this stuff on the internet when I fell across this link
Deep Dish Cylindrical Parabolic Template
I decided to give it a try. I mean, it promices a 10db gain that is easier to get and more than likely better than you could get from a cantenna all using stuff you probably have in your house right now. Heres the pics:
The Uniden WAP:
My Wife's antenna for her PC:
The net gain between the two was 11db!!! FOR FREE!!
No cost and about 15 minutes worth of cutting up a cornflakes box and a printed out template. I must recommend this for anyone who needs a quick and free 10db gain in their 802.11b home network. Both the WAP and computer's "dish" are pointed directly at each other. I turned around the WAP just to see how much a diference it would make being on the other side of the WAP and signal strength went down to -79db. I was expecting loss of signal but I still had a connection, it was plenty worse tho.
I bought a Uniden 1000 WAP off the [H] forums for $20 shipped. I then purchased two MSI 802.11b PCI cards. One for my wife's PC and one for my Son's who had to give up his port in the Linksys router for the WAP.
My Son's room is right next to our bedroom and so he has a pretty good connection. The MSI graph shows >-50db and also says "Excellent" under link quality.
Well, my wife's comptuer is all the way across the house, through two sperate additions to the house (one of which is through a brick wall) and as you would expect she had a "Poor" link quality that hovered around -75db. So I said "Crap, now I gotta spend more money and get a better antenna or a repeater or something... *deep sigh*". Well, I did some searching on the internet and had pretty much decided I was gonna do a denty-moore beef stew cantenna and shoot a straight shot right to my wife's PC. This was gonna cost me about $30 for the pigtail, the N-connectors and the stew of course. Anyway I was looking for good places to buy this stuff on the internet when I fell across this link
Deep Dish Cylindrical Parabolic Template
I decided to give it a try. I mean, it promices a 10db gain that is easier to get and more than likely better than you could get from a cantenna all using stuff you probably have in your house right now. Heres the pics:
The Uniden WAP:
My Wife's antenna for her PC:
The net gain between the two was 11db!!! FOR FREE!!
No cost and about 15 minutes worth of cutting up a cornflakes box and a printed out template. I must recommend this for anyone who needs a quick and free 10db gain in their 802.11b home network. Both the WAP and computer's "dish" are pointed directly at each other. I turned around the WAP just to see how much a diference it would make being on the other side of the WAP and signal strength went down to -79db. I was expecting loss of signal but I still had a connection, it was plenty worse tho.