Furthest Range USB Wireless adapter w/ antenna etc?

Hey guys. I have a Broadcom 802.11n inbuilt wireless adapter. For reasons I can't really be bothered to explain my laptop (due to family issues) is quite far away from the Wireless router...

To put it short I am looking into one of these sorts of things:
Belkin N+ Wireless N USB WiFi Adapter 300Mbps F5D8055 on eBay (end time 19-Mar-11 19:23:44 GMT)

A Usb wireless adapter. I need one that allows an antenna, also. Some sort of crc9 plug or something. It doesn't really matter as long as I can plug an antenna into it.

I have another question as well that I couldn't find an answer for on the internet. Would it help to have a powered USB hub (to increase the power) to the wireless usb? Would that help with the range as well, as well with boosting the antenna signal?

I've done lots of looking around on the internet and I can't find any sort of USB wireless 'n' that comes with a port for an antenna. You would think that they do.

I cant purchase a new router, my family would kill me for messing around with everything and I need a connection that wont drop out when the wind is strong or when it snows and it's cold as. I've ever tried covering the bottom of my laptop with aluminum foil... I read on a website that it helps lots. It 'seems' to have sort-of lowered the rate at which the signal drops out but lots of the time I'm still having problems just connecting... Somehow I'm not convinced.

Does anyone know of a reasonably priced Usb wireless device with a really long range? There has to be something for this kind of issue, and rather than some sort of crazy D.I.Y. idea I'd rather just buy something that will increase the range as far as possible that my laptop can receive our signal.

Thanks a huge ton, this is doing my head in.

EDIT: After looking around I found this on a Chinese website after some random clicking:
http://www.amazon.com/Alfa-AWUSO36N...1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1298408879&sr=1-1

I went to other sites like Amazon and found it for a really decent price. Quite good reviews and numerous other websites state that it can increase range up to 800 meters outside. Wow! I'll look around and if it's true I'll buy one and post a review here

 

Look at the powerline network adapters to get ethernet to your room.

 

Alfa AWUS036NH 2000mW Best Long Range USB Wireless Adapter. 802.11N/G/B. w/Jack & Antenna

same one you have linked, it's quite powerful in an open area. In a closed area like an apartment it will still pick up stuff from 200m away.

 

you could also do bridging two routers. That will give you better range than using a usb card.

 

Not always, and with bridging you have the massive throughput loss/overhead in addition to the ap being far away/weak in the first place. You wouldn't really want to game or stream hd stuff on a ranged bridge I don't think, it would be fine for surfing though.

Unless you already have a 2nd router capable of bridging kicking around I would just get the adapter. Oh and a common sense tip: if you place the ap and/or the adapter in a high spot, the signal strength increases. Windows are also good.

 

how would bridging two routers not be better? Routers have far better range than a clients wifi card. i'll draw a crappy example

EDIT:using another router to bridge the two will give you close to 200% the range (I would go with 160-170% for better performance though)

 

Since yesterday I've read at least 30 reviews from people who have bought the 1000mw and the 2000mw version and many many of them are claiming that the 1000mw does a far far better job. They also claim that the 9dB antenna performs a lot worse than the 3dB and the 9dB doesn't give an improvement but the 3dB gives a huge improvement.

I'm going to investigate the reviews a little more but I'm starting to sway to the 1000mw one now. The extra 1 W might have messed something up in the long run, 1000mw is pretty much the max amount of power you can get out of a usb port anyway if you combine 2 ports.

I can't bridge the router because that would require me messing around with the settings on the device my family has set up... it's not that I am incapable of doing that I'd rather just get something like this and pop it next to my window to get enough signal so it stops dropping out.

This Arla device looks pretty well.. 'cheap' but a lot of people are saying they are getting a very dramatic increase in signal strength. Unfortunately it seems to be a lot of 'hit and miss' at the moment but the 1000mw seems to have much more favorable reviews.

 

The reason I didn't mention the 1000mw version is because it is G only - I thought you were looking for N solutions. The reason the 1000mw version gets better reviews is threefold;

- it's been around longer
- it has better compatibility with older equipment/drivers/system kernels (some linux kernels in particular were slow to adopt the NH support)
- people who are using this really don't require N speeds

It also happens to be cheaper, and again people looking for devices like this usually only have a few purposes in mind, and want to spend as little as possible.

Oh and, be careful where you buy it from. Ebay and occasionally amazon have fake ones that are difficult to tell apart from real ones, the links I supplied are 'authorized retailers' for what it's worth.

@ksb: Of course routers get better output/ range compared to an internal or most external client things/adapters, they have their own power supply and have multiple large antenna. Their ability to receive and re-transmit (wireless bridge) is hindered enough that, unless multiple people are affected (ie one office corner is always dropping), it's much simpler to either set up a second AP, look into either transmit strength via yagi antenna or whatever, or increase receiver sensitivity. ty for the MSpaint, though

 

YouTube - Alfa AWUS036NH 2000mW USB vs. Rokland n3 (Read description box)

I watched this and well unless the guy bought a fake one it seems this that little 800mw with a 3dBi antenna gets another 6 networks on top of the Alfa..

So I guess it would give me better signal strength than the Alfa. Gosh to be honest I wish this was an easy choice for me to make, I mean seriously it's so annoying having to read mixed reviews. I agree that lots of the negative reviews could be just disregarded because people were complaining about a higher price and that there was no improvement from the older model. Well it's not meant to be really an 'improvement' in my opinion, the only difference is really the 'n' support as opposed to the non-n support. I don't need support drivers for older hardware or software as well... other people might and lots of others who aren't used to this kind of thing and just want a quick fix may just find if it doesn't work after plugging it in then it's broken and they want to take their anger out in a review. Which of course is also misleading. I can't find any of these on amazon.co.uk and I'm in Finland so I can't buy anything from Amazon.com which means I'm probably out of luck, and I'll probably only find fakes on ebay. There's a few people selling for the same price on Amazon basically (on ebay) but the stores are from Hong Kong even though the item is 'apparently' located in the UK. I'd rather not spend around 40€ for something that is just a cheap copy and doesn't work... at least I could force a refund with Paypal or something if it doesn't work correctly...

This guy has sold 48:
Alfa AWUS036NH 2000mW Long Range Wireless N USB Adapter on eBay (end time 26-Feb-11 16:02:41 GMT)

But the problem is it's really really hard to find any sort of 'feedback' given to those who have bought the device and I found some from others who bought other 'wireless boosters' (mind you they all looked a bit fake) and the reviews are quite bad... it also seems that this guy doesn't ship his items half the time. Not to mention I can't see any genuine hologram stickers on the product that verify it's legit.

I wonder if I can get a legit adapter to Finland...? Maybe all these other guys got fake ones.

EDIT: Contacted Alfa directly via email (they're in Taiwan) and asked them for their closest re-seller to me. Now waiting for a reply.

 

Ok on top of all that. I got a reply back and Alfa said that I should buy from the link you supplied, data alliance net.

It was sort of expensive $52.88 USD, so about 40€
But they said on their page that they have all of their items at 5 different places in the world. USA, UK, Mexico, Canada, Taiwan and that if I'm in Europe they'll ship from the UK.

Hopefully it'll be here soon but they have automatic email tracking apparently so I'll be able to check up on how things go. Hopefully this will be a god-send and not a waste of money. Fingers crossed. I'll write up a review after I get it and list the difference in signal strength and power compared to my Broadcom 802.11n in-built card.

Thanks for all of the help

 

If you have a problem with your signal because is too far, the best thing is to install an access point N,you won't need any cable except the power one, to improve your signal ..
If you buy an adapter, yes,it will boost the signal but, from my experience, you will still suffer with high and low...
As someone one already suggest you, I would go for the Access point/bridge solution..

 

Well I bought the Wan device and it was delivered within 2 days of my purchase. Wow! Especially considering I live in Finland it was lovely to receive it so quickly.

I've done multiple tests and I've videotaped myself unboxing the item as well as setting it up. Camera is a little dodgy and I have yet to upload some more videos of me using the device.

The range increase went from 7% on my inbuilt broadcom 802.11n to 22% on the Alfa with a 5dBi antenna. I am thinking about making a final purchase of a Yagi antenna and pointing it at my families house which is in a direct line of sight to my own house.

The Antenna doesn't seem to perform as well as my inbuilt card.
(The inbuilt card finds more networks but at a little less signal strength, which is of no use to me).
The Alfa finds less signals but gives me more strength to the ones I am familiar with, which is also useless but that counts for my current network which is what I wanted. With a powerful RP-SMA antenna such as a Yagi I am hoping for a 50% signal.

I'll upload the videos on youtube soon after I've sorted them out and I'll link them here. I think I got a good product for my money. The added ability of being able to move it around makes all the difference and it's definitely on par with the in-built wireless card I have already. I'm sure this device has tons of potential though with a better high gain antenna.

One question I have. The device says that it is a 2000mW device, it's only plugged into 1 usb port with the included cable. Which means the max power it's getting should be just 500mw? So I plugged my 2 male to 1 female usb adapter that I use for my external hard drive into it to see if the extra usb drive would make a difference and well to be honest I cant see a difference in signal strength.

Anyone who is good with electronics. Would the extra usb plug make a difference in the long run? Like should I use the cable with 2 to 1 usb plugs or should I just use the included cable with the device which is just 1 usb to mini usb.

Thanks

 

Get a decent mid-range directional antenna (panel or yagi) and you should be fine. The nice thing about using antennas for a weak connection is that it is pretty balanced, receive is boosted about the same as send.

As for the ports, milliamp != millwatt

1 standard usb 2.0 port at full draw = 5V * 500ma = 2.5W ideal. This might be enough to drive a 2W radio after conversion losses but it can't hurt to give it 5W from two ports.

Another thing to remember is a lot of these "high power" radios don't truly output anywhere near their claimed power, theres a lot of marketing BS combined with bad measurements. (<1W EIRP or sometimes far less is the law for consumer bands for many locales too)

 

Will a Yagi antenna make that much of a difference? Also is it worth the 60€ or so to buy a 30dBi RP-SMA signal booster?

I looked around on the internet and after a certain distance obviously the signal range of the router makes a big difference...

Thanks heaps for the advice

 

Yagi are a beam antenna so you will not picking all the noise up like you would on a std high gain whip antenna. The gain is also a lot higher too. If doing this on a 11n, you may need more than 1 though.