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extend signal 8 stories up?

Forum Wireless Networking : Range & connectivity - extend signal 8 stories up?

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So I work in a control tower, on the first floor there is a free wifi signal. I connected to it and walked up the stairs and it dropped at the 4th floor. Any ideas on how to possibly get this up to me on the 8th floor? On the 8th I currently get 2 bars and it wont get me a IP.

Below is a sweet side view diagram of my building.

each | is a floor of a normal type building.
[ ] is a little room that sits on top of the building that no one ever goes into, also has a direct line of site to me on the 8th, great place to keep a extender?
: represents a floor of the tower, L is where I lost the signal in the stair well and M is where I sit.

: M :
: :
: :
: L :
: : [ ]
| |
| |
| W |

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Well if you can still detect the signal with 2 bars at the 8'th floor then the problem most likely is you need a stronger antenna on your notebook to make it back to the router. My atheros chipsets typically don't drop off until about a half bar or no bar but this is kind of guessing since all hardware is a little different and maybe it's the way the drivers are written. Things you could try is a directional antenna on the router and notebook. I would start by buying a notebook card with a detachable antenna (they are rare but they do exist). Then if that doesn't make it try setting up a directional entenna that would connect to the notebook. If it still doesn't connect then odds are you need either a directional antenna on the router too. General rule of thumb whatever distance the antenna is rated for indoors cut it in half.

Reply to brw02005

just found this, uhhh what are the 2 orange cards? I do have the same black/white connectors as this one.

Reply to petebert

Well not going to lie never seen that connector or antenna type in my life. Usually directional are a single small dish or plate and omnidirectional are the pointy ones.

Reply to brw02005

I've got a dell inspiron laptop and it has wires on the wireless card just like that, but ya I really dont know what the cards are. I have seen the home made parabolic dish website and would give it a try if I could find an antenna to connect to it.

Reply to petebert

those antennas are all over ebay for around $7 and got me thinking. So tonight I pulled the antenna out of my laptop and built the basic right angle antenna from http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/Ez-10/ and did get partial success. I could still not connect to anything from inside but unlike last night I could connect outside on the catwalk and could get a "good" connection if I pointed the antenna the right direction.

So I'm thinking as a cheap experiment I could buy one of these cheap ebay ones, actually take the time to build a decent parabolic antenna for it and maybe extend the wire, but would there be any loss of signal if I say made the wire 40' long?

I'm sure an extender sitting out there would work but it would be exposed to the weather so that wouldnt be a good idea, of course I would only put it outside when I needed it but these things still arent designed for that much exposure. Or there's also the option of putting the extender in that unused room that sits on the building and pointing its antenna up at me.

Reply to petebert

Yeah reaching the point where I run out of good advice. Longest antenna cord I've heard of people using is 7 feet. 40 ft seems a bit much. I'd probably buy a wireless to wired bridge and just run ethernet to the notebook. Prolly run you like $60 and then you still maybe SOL if the signal doesn't reach and then would move on to the third party antenna where you are now. The longest randge one would probably be this one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6833162134

hacked with DD-WRT alternative firmware. Wish you could set up the router to repeat the signal but that would require the router on the ground floor to support WDS. As for the cable you got to remember the signal is not very powerful and can degrade heavily with long cords. IDK though maybe you can prove me wrong with some real big low resistance cords or maybe it's just a wise tail I hear about and it doesn't affect it as much as people say..

Message edited by brw02005 on 10-03-2007 at 02:50:27 AM

Reply to brw02005

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