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Directional Antennas

S

Stiganator

Platinum Member
I have a Dynex wireless G router.

House has steel siding.

It would be cool to make the wifi extend to my gazebo, which is about 150 ft not quite line of sight, gazebo is about 50 feet lower. I can see the top of the gazebo from the house, but not the floor.

I made a foil parabolic reflector.

Are there any other DIY antennas that work better? I think I'm getting about +10 dBm with the parabolic reflector, but once I'm at the gazebo my SNR drops to 1-3 ish.

Does wifi channel matter at all for distance?

Noise seems to be around -90 dB pretty much everywhere. That pretty normal?

What's the best SNR you've ever had? Does it make a difference or is anything over 20 just icing on the cake?
 
Actually, a CD (or probably a DVD) makes a pretty good WiFi reflector.

Experiment with the distance from the antenna, I believe somewhere around 3 3/4" will be the sweet spot, but play with it.

Not quite line-of-sight is generally not good enough, line-of-sight through an aperture is usually not good enough either, unless there is also a clear "Fresnel Zone."

Perhaps your best move would be to put the AP (and antenna) up high enough to get a good clean shot at the gazebo. Extending the length of the network cable to the AP is much more desirable than extending the length of the antenna cabling/connection because of the losses involved at 2.4GHz in common coaxial media.

Good Luck
Scott


 
Also, an empty can of Pringles amplifies the signal. Changing channel (1, 6, 11) is a good idea as well.
 
Originally posted by: ScottMac
Perhaps your best move would be to put the AP (and antenna) up high enough to get a good clean shot at the gazebo. Extending the length of the network cable to the AP is much more desirable than extending the length of the antenna cabling/connection because of the losses involved at 2.4GHz in common coaxial media.
Click to expand...
This would also be my suggestion. These days, you can even set up a cheap WRT54GL (~$60) as an AP and even rig it for psuedo-PoE operation... you could drop it in a window that has LOS (line of sight) to the gazeebo or even toss it into an all-weather plastic box up on the roof/ceiling if you have access to it.
 
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