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Bubba9
join:2003-10-05
Marietta, GA

Bubba9

Member

would / do antennas make a difference

I just got a wrt54gl, I am in a single story house with the router on one side of the house.

Would a different antenna give me better signal strength to the opposite side of the house.

I've seen some on eBay, does it matter where I get them and what size should I get?

thanks
hartecom
join:2009-08-11
Fort Worth, TX

1 edit

hartecom

Member

The correct antenna can help considerably in increasing the strength of your wifi signal within your home. For every 3 db gain of your wifi antenna it will effectively double the power of your radio. If your radio has a 100 milliwatts output of power and it goes to a 3 db antenna the antenna will double the effective radiated output of your radio to 200 milliwatts.

I'm not sure how your house is set up but ideally having a 360 degree omni directional antenna in the middle of the house would be best for balanced coverage throughout.

You can get a directional antenna but the way they increase power is by concentrating the signal in a single direction. As a result the entire house wouldn't be covered and the signal would be concentrated to the area you are pointing it at.

They do make ceiling mounted omni directional antennas they usually will increase output by 6-8 db which would more than double the effective power of your access point. The router should be located very close to it as there is significant line loss in the coaxal cable from ap to antenna.

Hope this helps.

I understand that most cable or dsl connections are usually mounted to a wall on one side of the house or the other which makes placing router in middle of the house difficult. You can modify it and add POE (power over ethernet) In this way you run a long cat 5 cable possibly up through the sheetrock of house to the center and place a ceiling mounted omni antenna in the center. In this way the router is close to the antenna thereby reducing line loss between antenna and accesspoint (router). There are many wifi units that dont need this modification to add this functionality I don't believe the wrt54gl is one. Here is a tutorial on the modification. »www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/vi ··· p=101908

Hagar
join:2004-10-31
Sunnyvale, CA

Hagar to Bubba9

Member

to Bubba9
I would try a parabolic reflector first. I put one on my wrt54gl using the template from here »www.freeantennas.com/pro ··· emplate/.
I used a pringles can for material and it took me about 20 minutes.

I got a 8db improvement and made a big difference.