Wifi signal repeated

[gsmithyca]

I have a friend who lives in a semi isolated area in Northern Ontario Canada. He is sharing an internet connection from his neighbour and paying a share of the cost. The neighbour is on a hub. My friend is pullig in the wifi signal with an external antenna and using mini usb router that plus into his laptop. What I would like to know is there some system or setup that can take the signal from the mini usb router and run it through a repeater that can take a wifi signal from a usb connection so that he can have wifi connections for both his laptop and his desktop computers in his house.
Regards
Len

 

[inzone]

The connection that you described is a little confusing in that you said the neighbor is on a Hub , did you mean a router ? If the neighbor is sending the wireless signal to your friends home then your friend could get a range extender or a wireless access point that would grab the signal from the neighbor and send it through out the house.

Without knowing the actual setup and distances involved you could run a cat 6 shielded cable between the homes and that would be the best option and provide the best signal and all your friend would have to do is get a router and have a wireless signal through out the house.

So these are two options that you could consider and I'm sure that there are more.

 

[gsmithyca]

The nieghbour as I understand it is on a Bell cell hub for her internet. She has a wifi router in her house which is several hundred feet from my friend. I got him an external wifi receiving antenna to help pull in the signal. It's one of those I got off of Ebay, it's a square box affair with a small usb router. The antenna attaches to it and it connects to his laptop via a usb. The laptop powers the usb adapter. I am a newbie to this type of setup and am trying to learn more about it.

The antenna and usb adapter is similar to this one on Ebay...

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/40dbm-WLAN-1000mw-150Mbps-RT3070-usb-Adapter-10dBi-2-4G-WIFI-Panel-Antenna-5m-/110992311353?pt=US_Networking_Boosters_Extenders_Antennas&hash=item19d7a84439

This is the link to the Ebay item on auction.

I would appreciate instructions if it is possible to get my idea to work.

 

[inzone]

I have very limited knowledge on this type of setup but from what I can see you are almost there and it's just a matter of getting a usb type router to connect that usb adapter into. There is one way that I can tell you about that I actually came up with and worked for me in a situation where we didn't have cable internet and all we had was dial up. With dial up being just ok for web surfing barely I wanted more.
I signed up for Direct Tv's ,DirectWay sattellite internet which consisted of a 3 foot sattellite dish that could transmit and recieve a signal. The only issue was that the sattellite modem was in two parts , one reciever and one transmitter and the cable that connected them to a computer was a usb cable only. So to use a router was not an option because a routers input from a modem is a WLAN port and thats ethernet cable.
So my solution was to use my work laptop as a sort of router and I connected the usb cable to it and then connected an ethernet cable to it and ran it to a wireless router which then could connect to the other computers in the house. The problem was that the laptop had to stay on all the time and when I needed it for work the internet was not in use , so there were a few draw backs but it did work.
Your friend may be able to use that same idea if he wants to leave the laptop on for the times that the internet needs to be used. All he has to do is keep the same setup he has now and take an ethernet cable and plug one end into the laptop and the other end into a wireless router and he can have wireless internet in the house. If there is only one other computer to be connected he could run the ethernet cable to the other computer and connect that way.

 

[gsmithyca]

thanks inzone

I have an older laptop and a wifi router that I'm not using. I will experiment with your idea, if it works for me then this just might be the ticket for my friend. It would solve the problem of him having to use dial up on his desktop. I coud get a usb antenna for his desktop and he then could go wifi on both his main unit and laptop. Thanks again for a possible solution. I've been racking my brains and searcing the net for solutions for a couple of weeks now.

 

[gsmithyca]

Hello Inzone

I have been working on the wifi signal system since you gave me the idea of routing through a laptop. In this case I thought to hookup the wifi antenna and adapter to a desktop instead of a laptop. It's been driving me nuts. I have tried several different router configurations to no avail. Today I decided to use the -link 615 router connection wizard. Well I finally was able to log onto the router. But, even though the wifi signal from my neighbour is coming in strong on the desktop I have no internet connection from the router. My neighbour was kind enough to give me his wifi password so that I could experiment in getting this idea to work.

So this is what I have, external wifi antenna going into a usb adapter that is plugged into my desktop. Then from the desktop to the extra dlink wifi router via ethernet cable. So how can I configure the router to take the wifi signal going into my desktop and broadcast it. How did you get your system to broadcast from your laptop through your router to your other computers for wifi in the house? My brain is starting to get twisted trying to figure this out. I just don't know enough to think this through.

Can you help?
Regards

 

[inzone]

The router has to be connected to the desktop by ethernet cable, so the modem is connected to the desktop by USB cable and then the router is connected to the desktops ethernet port by cable.

 

[gsmithyca]

Yes I have the usb wifi adapter connected to the desk top and then connected to the router via cable. That's all working ok. When I get on my laptop I can see and log onto the router now but there is no internet connection. For some reason the router is not routing the wifi signal from the antenna attached to the desktop. Either I don't have the router configured correctly or maybe it's not possible to take a wifi signal from outside and re-route this way.

 

[inzone]

I think what would work better is to have a device that can recieve the signal from the neighbor and input it into a wireless router so that it will send the signal through the house. Something like this;

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833164047