Wireless Repeater Puzzle

I don't have any suggestions or answers, but ...............

I find that AWESOME!!!!! that you are pursuing this.

How about just getting a good antennae for the wireless. Some are even directional.

I thought 7db should've done some good, given that the little stick thingy that came with the repeater was only about 2db.

A good point, tho'; when I got the 7db one, I went for it 'cause Maplins were out of stock on the higher gain ones.

I have my optional antennae situated by my window so I can sit across the street in a cemetery, (old and looks more like a park with huge ancient trees) or just on my porch. This is connected directly to my wireless AP and never given me trouble.

The best place I know of for what you're looking for would be http://www.wlanparts.com/

They have a lot of add-on antennas, directional, high gain, even external ones for outside. It looks like most directional have a significantly higher gain since all the transmit power and receive sensitivity is concentrated in along one axis instead of blindly as omnidirectional antennas do.

...no, I don't work there or have any connection...just been impressed by the inventory.

Actually, bummer you spent money already, but here what would be the cat's meow in my opinion.

It's an external antenna unit that contains the whole AP so you can simply run RJ-45 and a power cord into it and point it in the direction you want.

A good directional antenna could help much more. This one is a 18 dB antenna, I've bought a same one on eBay for 20 £:

line of site is best when aiming your antennae. If your repeater has a link quality indicator on the gui interface then shoot for best SNR or quality link. Once you know you have established a link automatically, i would note the ip address, subnet, gateway address and DNS obtained from the AP. Statically assign these values to your repeater if those options can be manually applied. I would assign the ip address to a value towards the end of the range. This way,your ip is less likely to be taken by someone else if you have a link loss or the AP goes down temporarily. I would also check for any firmware updates for the repeater incase it had any issues in the current version of firmware.

Thanks for all replies/suggestions so far.

For anyone interested, this is the repeater, and this is the antenna.

It's tough to get pinpoint boosting with a single antenna booster since they're made to provide a better signal in another area of a building...not really target the signal to one place. Most of your power and receive sensitivity is wasted in the periphery. A directional antenna could still help but it would have to be placed between the original router and the pub...while aiming in the best possible line between the two.

If you're getting lots of signal power but a bad connection there might be too much noise. Unfortunately 2.4GHz is the frequency that a lot of cordless phones (not to mention all microwaves) run on so the evening hours when these other items get the most use it makes it harder for a wlan signal to get through so you might want to cycle through the channels and pick the best one.

OK, it's a stick antenna. I would check both the orientation and the ground plane. I've tried to find a good illustration of what is going on so I'm back to boats somehow. I can't make the image paste so here is the link:

http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/westadvisor/10001/-1/10001/VHFAntennas.htm

Here is an image from Wikipedia:

Radiation patterns of antennas and their images reflected by the ground. At left the polarization is vertical and there is always a maximum for . If the polarization is horizontal as at right, there is always a zero for .

So what you are dealing with is a dipole (stick) antenna which is going to create lobes of radiated energy that will also be reflected from the ground plane. The reflections tend to go up, but you want to transmit horizontally. Thus you have to be as high above the ground plane as possible.

You also have to have the antenna in the laptop broadcasting back to the repeater antenna, which is probably more of a trick. Especially if you have the laptop in your lap, since your body will absorb a lot of the radiated energy, depending on the frequency, etc. But you need to get the PC antenna off the floor a bit.

You've got a moderate gain antenna, so the radiation lobes should extend a ways but if they aren't pointed at the receiving antenna all you are doing is broadcasting to the ether.

I'd get the repeater antenna as high in the house as practical, next to a window, and angle it so that a line drawn 90 degrees from the vertical axis of the antenna is pointed right at the spot you sit in the pub. Which is, hopefully, close to a window.

Enjoy your pint. Have one for me.

Thanks for the explanations & hints. I'm doing most of what you've suggested - easier to explain with a picture of my set-up, which I'll try to do later. I'm on site at present, supposed to be ladder programming a Micrologix - people might start asking questions if I fire up Autocad & start drawing houses!

Working from home (er...the pub) are we?!??

JohnDG,

Why not just get the pub to deliver across the road? Problem solved :)

They would deliver, no prob., or I could take prisoners. But while I'm a bit of a loner in that I sit, betimes, in a quiet corner of the pub working, doing a crossword or perchance a sudoku or even staring into the space at the bottom of my pint, I still prefer to have a few people around. Also, I'm not fond of drinking pints at home (I'd rather have coffee & scotch). And the brewery foots the bill for HVAC ...

I could go on ad nauseam about why I'd rather work in the pub (sometimes), but you'd probably get sick of reading about it .

I wholeheartedly agree. A glass of wine, beer or scotch is always infinitely more enjoyable when taken in company. Enjoy, & I hope you get your wireless network sorted. (or get the pub to put in wireless internet access - they may boost their turnover?)

Cheers

Tony

Make a deal with them. You sell internet access (since it's your connection) and they reap the benefits of more loners working (& drinking) in silence during the non-peak hours! Like office space for rent with a menu!

I'm not an expert, but here are some things to chew on:

In the end the limit to your range is probably how far away the router (or repeater/extender) can see the laptop. Given that your range will be limited by the transmission power of the laptop, a more powerful extender will do you no good at all. It sounds as if your laptop may have internally available the more recent N standard anyway??? If so, the transmission range of the laptop will normally be greater using the N protocol and standard than using the G. Then there is the issue of dead spots - I believe your router has multiple independent receiver antennae for diversity and the G repeater/extender has just the one - another blow in favour of the router. So the only conceivable advantage of the G system is that you have a directional antenna. But the directional gain is only 7-dB, and the practical gain of the antennae on the router will be at least 3-dB. By the way, 7-dB gain would increase your range by a factor of 2.24, not "over 3" as claimed by Maplin, and 4-dB would give just 1.6-times the range - so (unless it said "area coverage" rather than range) you can happily return the antenna on the basis that the claims were misleading.

Upshot: the otherwise inferior G-repeater/extender will have at most 4-dB additional antenna gain but no diversity, so the (backwards compatible) router will probably give better results even if your laptop is G-standard only.

BTW, where I live connections between my router and most laptops has an embarrassingly large range of over 150 metres - even in the direction where it transmitting through concrete walls that were stabilised with expanded metal. Given that the pub is just across the road, I would suggest that you dispense with the G system and try to see what happens when you position the router with an outside view (not metal windows, please) and fiddle with the positions and orientations of the antennae (and perhaps the box as well).

A thought: if you know roughly where you will be sitting, an aluminium foil reflector spaced a few wavelengths away from the antenna and directed to give additional signal at your seat might be just what you need - it'll need some fiddling to get the phasing right, but a flat reflector could give 6-dB enhancement - and if you could get the curvature correct (radius = twice the distance to the antenna) you could get a lot more (some trouble, but a bit cheaper than the alternative).

Thanks for your input. I'm too nackered to go through all the details at present, but a couple of thoughts...

1) Laptop is G only.

2) "a more powerful extender will do you no good at all" ... but if the antenna is better at transmitting, surely it'll be better at receiving?

3) "I would suggest that you ... position the router with an outside view ..." this is the tricky bit. The router is on my desk, in the loft space (my office/workshop). There is no possible direct line of sight to the "target location" (AKA the pub over the road) without knocking a hole in the roof (my landlord may not approve). Which is why I started playing with the repeater - which is in by bedroom, & has direct line of sight through a uPVC framed window.

I thought about "better" external antennae for the router - but there are three of the buggers, & I wouldn't know where to start. I also thought about fiddling with the orientation, but this is tricky. I'd have to make sure that there was someone sober, smart & trustworthy enough to man the laptop while I twiddled the antenna positions. Alternatively, I could do the trial'n'error thing solo - but I'd prob'ly end up getting squished by a bus or e.g. gritting truck while running back & forth across the road.

Woe is me.

I also have some interesting gripes re. connection via the repeater (I couldn't get onto CR4 while connected (with 'excellent' signal strength) via the repeater - but had no problem when I forced a connection direct to the router).

Puzzled & tired. G'night.

Re your notes:

1) G will restrict your speed at a given signal level - but it clearly is not the major problem at this point.

2) What I meant was that a higher power extender box would probably make no difference. However, your comment in 3 about "fiddling with the antennas in the router" make me suspicious that your situation may have turned the potential advantage of a high-gain antenna into a crippling disadvantage. (Apologies if the following is teaching grand-designer to suck eggs)
I think you already know that the term "antenna gain" actually means that more of the power transmitted through the antenna is concentrated into some directions – which means that other directions will be starved of power. So what is the pattern of an "omnidirectional antenna" with 7-dB gain?. Essentially, the signal transmitted in the direction perpendicular to the axis of the antenna should be 7-dB higher than that of a reference antenna* – but that signal has been stolen from signal in other directions. If we imagine the antenna mounted on a flat table, that would only be possible if most of the power in the beam is restricted to a vertical angle of about 11-degrees. Depending on the design of the antenna, that 11-degrees may be +/-5.5 degrees (the simplest design in the absence of a ground plane), or it could cover the range from 0-degrees to 11-degrees. (That is much tighter than you would get from a "directional" antenna with similar gain - and I'm not certain you would have expected such an issue).

Another possible issue would be with multipath - it may be that the path from your bedroom is exactly wrong so that the ground reflection is out of phase with the direct path at the "natural" position for using the laptop. You may get some benefit by raising it.Then there is the possibility that the wall in the pub has a metal stud in just the wrong place for transmission from the bedroom - but the loft bypasses it nicely.

I don't understand the issue with CR4 when you have high signal strength. I can make guesses, but they would be poorly informed.

Hope the sleep has helped...

*Correctly, the reference antenna should be a dipole (dipoles transmit no power along the axis of the antenna). However, be aware that some suppliers compare the signal to that of a hypothetical omni-directional antenna – so there is some ambiguity.

Thanks for response (to all) - watch this space (in a few weeks).

John