January 10, 2005

Curious, George: Wireless Booster Do any of you Monkeys know of a good wireless booster-type thing? I don't want to boost an existing network, but rather increase my PowerBook's wireless range so I can pick up my buddy's nextwork from down the street.
posted by Weezel 19 years ago
  • Try this out! 1. Cheap USB adapter 2. Chinese Mesh frying thingy, 3. ??? 4. Profit!!!
  • Is your buddy involved in this project? He can get a directional antenna. Depending on how far down the street, something for around $129 or so might do the trick. An Airport Express, which also gives you wireless stereo, is also in that price range and range-range. If not, you can install something like the Whip Pro from QuickerTek.
  • No, he's not in on this. He was mainly an example. By the same token, the place where I work doesn't have wireless, but the resteraunt accross the street does. I would love to be able to pick op thiers.
  • I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet, but are you familiar with a cantenna?
  • The main problem, for us powerbook users, is that there are damn few pcimcia wifi cards that are mac friendly and have external antenna attachments. USB wifi dongles on the other hand, are fairly platform agnostic (Fairly, caveat emptor and all) and tend to be cheaper, as is the aforementioned parabolic chinese cookware technology upgrade hack. ps. If you know any, I'll gladly have your children/ give you my unending love. (Note: Modern Science, financial werewithall, and good sense permitting.)
  • Any pcimcia wifi cards that have external antenna options and are mac friendly, that is.
  • My friend and I have done the dumpling strainer thing linked to by freen above. We had one at each end, and, using netstumbler, we found that we were getting 15 db from each antennae for a total of 30db gain, which is quite good. We had these antennas indoors and were able to span a block distance through trees and a garage. The connection was good. We aligned them using netstumbler on both ends in an adhoc point to point setup. We used cheap USB wifi, which cost about 25 bucks each. We found the strainers (12 inches) for 8 bucks each. A couple of wood scraps, some simple calculus to find the focal point, a few tie straps and a few rubber bands, and we were in business. I’d be glad to answer any questions.
  • Finding Focal Points: How?
  • Related.
  • I'm dense as hell...does the cantennae attach to the wireless router or to the receiving computer? I am working on my VW campervan for summer adventures and if this would help me snag wireless on the road, that would be sweet indeed.
  • I'm in a similar situation: I've got a Toshiba P25 and I'm always trying to latch onto someone's network in the local area here. My problem is I only get one bar of signal if that; so you can see where having all the mo-fi monkeys pitching in is *just* what I need. Go Monkeys, Go!
  • My internal card on my Toshiba P25 is an Atheros AR5001X+ wireless network card. Anyone have any idea how I can get this thing to pull in a bit more signal or am I going to have to shell out for a wi-fi card with a plug-in adapter for a cantenna? I'm thinking that at this point I might go the cantenna route. I'm using Netstumbler for looking at networks, I was wondering if anyone knows of a software app that helps a wi-fi card to boost it's signal a bit. Any other ideas?
  • Self link explaining how I found the focal point, an excel and pdf file with the formula and measurements needed to find the focal point, and a few pics of my dumpling strainer wireless dish. Freen: I found a non-calc method of calculating the focal point and put it into the above excel file. Much easier than my previous method =-).