Re: [PLUG] Home Networking Question

["William H. Magill" <magill@mcgillsociety.org>]

On Wednesday, March 12, 2003, at 09:45  AM, Timothy Lee Young wrote:
> so far, we've got up to about 75ft. range, then it cuts out; she has 
> her
> router at the front side of her house, and i've recommended for her to
> move the router/ap to the rear side of her house, so we may have a 
> chance
> yet of accomplishing her wish; i could guess that we still may need a
> signal booster or external antenna tho.

Only a 75 foot range?

Sounds like you either have some seriously dense wall materials or some 
seriously weak receiver sensitivity.

When I was testing 802.11 cards back when Apple introduced their 
Airport product there were some serious differences in the sensitivity 
of the receivers associated with the different cards. Two different 
cards side by side would report dramatically different signal strengths 
from the same transmitter to the same physical location!

Antenna orientation will also have a dramatic effect. If the AP antenna 
is vertical, so should the receiver's be... And all APs have an 
antenna. Some are just built into the case like Apple's rather than 
configurable like LinkSys.
Consider that with most laptops, the receiver's antenna is on the end 
of the plugin wireless card, and hence horizontal. But the tendency is 
to make the AP antenna vertical. Make the AP antenna horizontal and 
signal strength will increase.

Granted, you have to live with what hardware she's already got, but 
unless you are literally, trying to go through brick walls, 75 feet is 
a short range for any of the APs I've tested in the past. Most all 
clocked in the 100-200 foot range with little or no problem (and still 
giving 10 meg performance).

If she needs to get across the alley to a friends, put the AP near a 
window. Window glass, even multiple layers, is virtually transparent to 
RF... just don't put up metal blinds for privacy or bars for security 
in front of the glass.

T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
# Beige G3 - Rev A motherboard - 768 Meg
# Flat-panel iMac (2.1) 800MHz - Super Drive - 768 Meg
# PWS433a [Alpha 21164 Rev 7.2 (EV56)- 64 Meg]- Tru64 5.1a
magill@mcgillsociety.org
magill@acm.org
magill@mac.com

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