wireless antennas, help please

[johnnymier]

Ok I posted this some time ago:
http://www.antionline.com/showthread...079#post646079

I need to expand my wireless network, I have been looking around and have found that antennas are the solution for repeating the wireless signal. I am using a linksys router and have looked around for antennas, but only found d-link and 3com antennas that can only be used with their own products. Anyone know of generic antennas that comply with 802.11b and don't depend on any propietary hardware???

thanks
J

[Turing_Machine]

http://www.lxe.com/pdf/SpireDatasheet.pdf
nasty antennae for a serious range.

[RoadClosed]

Are you still trying to accompilsh what you asked for in the other post? That is connect 2 houses?

[johnnymier]

RoadClosed: yeah, I'm still trying to connect the 2 houses, the area I need to cover lies about 100 ft (or less) from where my router and dsl modem is located, but with the walls and stuff the signal is atenuated a lot.

[tekno]

I think you would need away to connect an antenna to your wireless router. I could be mistaken but I don't think the Linksys routers have that capability.

[RoadClosed]

I need to know the nomeclature of all your equipment. I need to know what kind of antenna connectors they have.

[Turing_Machine]

http://www.hdcom.com/2.4ghzantennas.html

they seem to have the equipment and possible antennae indexed.

[jinxy]

To be frank i don't think an antenna is the best solution for your problem. Firstly because unless you opt for a directional antenna your network will be braodcasting over a fairly large area so will be a security risk.

Secondly the cost's involved will be quite high.

I think a more suitable solution to your problem would be to use a wireless access point. It should be a simple task to position it so that you can get a reliable signal from both houses.
You may nead to spend some time finding a good position for it.

[Turing_Machine]

Omni-directional antennae do broadcast everywhere. If you are sending a signal in a tight stream, it is called directional. You would not have all that much broadcast information externally to the beam you are trying to communicate over, if you use a tight beam antenna.

That being said, still you will be susceptable to people grabbing onto your network, and if you are not using some sort of encryption other than the WAP SSID, etc, then they may have access, just as if they conected to you over the internet.

In other words, don't enable silly services, or unneeded protocols, and keep your machine updated, just like everyone else does.

[thehorse13]

Turing_Machine is correct, you will want a high gain, low focus directional antenna, which is optimal for bridging wireless APs between buildings or houses, whichever. This will concentrate your signal while at the same time not throw all kinds of traffic in every direction (omni-directional as referenced above).

--TH13