Best Wifi Adapter / Reciever?

Nate Silvers · 24 Dec 2008 at 19:25

I have a wireless router and my friend lives down the road from me and we plan to share my router. Which is the best adpater for wifi, I'm guessing a usb one which can be placed near or cello taped to the window?

Skidilliplop · 24 Dec 2008 at 19:31

How far down the road?

For distance, directional antennae are better, these usually connect to PCI cards

Duke · 24 Dec 2008 at 19:36

Best option would be to get a PCI card and an additional antenna which can be moved about.

As above though, we need to know how far we're talking here. Most wireless routers will only cover (at best) the house and bit of the garden so he'll probably need to strap an external direction antenna to the side of his house

Skidilliplop · 24 Dec 2008 at 19:57

Yup, if i were doing it i'd have a router with dual antennae remove one and replace it with a directional one and pop it outside, and the same for the remote NIC, mount the antennae where there is Line of sight to eachother and see what happens. high gain directional antennae tend to achieve much greater range than omni-directional ones as all the transmission power is focussed into a directed cone.
be aware though that removing one of the router arials will reduce the coverage in the house with the router.

It's something i've not seen anyone on here do but I rekon it'll go between two and 4 houses down on SOHO kit. If you go for it let us know how it works. You may be OcUK pioneers

Nate Silvers · 24 Dec 2008 at 20:03

Oh I dunno maybe a few houses down the road, I may have quite a few houses. I'm liking the PCI card and additional antenna idea, which would the best to buy.

Oh I can logon to some wifi connections using my eepc and they live like 10 houses down road.

Skidilliplop · 24 Dec 2008 at 20:11

Nate Silvers said:
Oh I dunno maybe a few houses down the road, I may have quite a few houses. I'm liking the PCI card and additional antenna idea, which would the best to buy.

Oh I can logon to some wifi connections using my eepc and they live like 10 houses down road.

That's suprising, though it depends on many factors. Certainly outdoor range is up to 3 times that of indoor range due to lack of obstacles.

As far as antennae go retail ones are about 5-7dB gain boost. The higher the gain the better basically. Specialist ones may go higher.

Shash · 24 Dec 2008 at 21:57

Maybe ask if one of your neighbours in between would be kind enough to stick an access point in their place