Wireless Antenna Advice needed

Hello my friends, I am currently thinking about purchasing a wifi antenna and dont really know where to start. Have never used one before.

I am in Africa right now, and the place where the wifi is, is less than a quarter or half mile away.

It needs to be outdoors, and maybe usb? Unless there are other ways you can connect the antenna like firewire or what have u.

Im not really on any kind of budget, but anything below $200 would be fine.

Also, would it be possible that maybe if I had an antenna, I would get faster speeds than using my stock at the wifi center?

Thanks

 

A wifi 'antenna' is often a whole new external USB connect adapter. There are some high power/high performance external adapters you can get. Do a 'net search and you'll find them quite easily for less than $200.

You disable/turn off the internal wifi on your laptop and load drivers for the new adapter just like any other USB device and wifi adapter. Easy-peasy.

From personal experience, getting one shipped into Africa might be a challenge unless you have access to a secure shipping service or you have a friend/colleague joining you who can carry it over in their luggage.

 

Get an alfa 1W or 2W external usb.
ALFA Network – WLAN, WiFi phone, ADSL, KVM, Bluetooth, PoE Products
1W is better (older more supported chipset)

And just make your own antenna, they won't sell high powered since legal reasons.
You find a lot of design and how to-s on youtube.
They easy to make and cheap materials.

You just need to point 2 antenna same direction and you can reach insane distances.
Check wifi record on google

 

awesome!

thanks for the info

 

I have a Dell Wireless 1397 WLAN Mini-card. If I got a Alfa AWUS036H 1000mW 1W 802.11b/g USB it will help? Also do you turn off your Dell mini card?

Sama98b, with making your own antenna how would you link that with the Alfa?

 

Need a bit of clarification - is the WiFi source a quarter mile away? Or is that how far you travel to get WiFi?

 

You can buy extender cables or cables + plugs, if I do not want to go pure homemade.
Personally just used spare part connector from an old pc with external antenna.

Sht load of tutorials on youtube too:
YouTube - make wifi antenna

You don't have to turn off the builtin wireless, running netbook with 3 wireless card just fine all can do different things.

Alfa AWUS036H 1000mW is made for 1 reason in mind extreme range wardriving and ...
For normal use ppl don't really need that much power, in most country they lock it down to 20dbi and 1000mW is 30dbi but linux can unlock most settings ^^

To use out these cards fully have to give up on windows and turn to linux,
since with these cards running ubuntu mainly on netbooks.

 

True, just set the external adapter to Ch 11, and the internal adapter to something else, just to minimize cross-talk and improve latency.

 

I got my alfa 2W external usb, was ment to get the 1W

The bigger antenna that comes with the alfa 2W is not really that good. Overall the alfa 2W is ok ish. I can't hook up with the wifi i wanted at work.

So i am going to make my own antenna for the first time. I found this How-To: Build a WiFi biquad dish antenna -- Engadget

I really don't know much about satellite dishes but would this one do? Buy 60cm Satellite Dish. at Argos.co.uk - Your Online Shop for .

Yer so first time doing this so any help or tips will be very grateful

 

1W alfa chipset better supported then the 2W one.

Just go out trash hunting you can find sht load of dish on the curb, or in junk stores, any of them will do, you just need to mount the wifi antenna in the focus point.

No clue if you can or can't unlock the full 2W .. it should go up to 33db about but os will limit it 20db most likely.

That is one of the best antenna you can make at home, except if you want to make a really focused one for point to point connection.

I had the 500mw N compatible alfa b4 ... but for longer range and more power went back to 1W G.

 

yea same thing happened to me. i bought a slightly bigger antenna, and didn't see much improvement. I guess the antenna has to be kinda big.

 

It's not a question of size, it's power and directionality. Radio loses signal as an inverse square of distance - basically, double the distance requires quadruple the power. If it's an omnidirectional signal (like basically all wireless signals), only the smallest bit of the increased power is going in the direction you want. Typically you'd use a flat panel antenna to focus the signal where you want, but a hacked dish works almost as well.

 

Half a mile is quite far. Here is what you need:

Freenet Antennas

Directional antennas offer a narrow angle making it ideal for long distances. You just need an extender cable and RP-SMA adapter for your Alfa 1W