By Jeff Thomann (Mastermesh) (128.206.231.36) on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 10:57 pm:

Does anybody know of a way to get a wireless network interface card to amplify it's receiving signal enough to reach oh say a mile or so? I just found out today that the University that I work for has a heavy duty wireless network in most of the main buildings on campus, but I'm roughly 7 blocks from campus in my apartment, and want to get my desktop pc in the apt to connect to that network, as anything would improve the sucky 28.8 k that I'm dialing up to to reach the network now.

By John Fornasar (Jfornasar) (67.192.246.159) on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 11:25 pm:

Jeff,

Check out the network cards site, or better yet, the IT network people at your school, you should be able to get an antenna booster.
We use about 1500 wireless units, with an antenna booster in each vehicle connected to a docking platform. Definitely helps in poor reception areas, although certain areas are still "dead" (waiting for the local phone co. to install more transmitters).
We're on a digital phone network, you'll have to determine the system used by your university.

By Kelly Lee Myers (Kmyers) (209.89.36.152) on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 03:03 am:

Hey Jeff.

There are a lot of active (powered) anttenna options you may want to look at. I actually have something that I used for some of my media streaming technology development tests which is intended for outdoor use and mounts to a rail. If you want it, its sitting here in a box. It comes with the cabling (about 20 feet which is thick coaxial cable), mounting hardware and the lightning suppresion unit as well as an adapter that plugs into most PCMICA wireless cards for laptops.

While it does not have the amplifier with it, when powered, will do wireless shots up to for miles if placed with in line of sight.

Email me off list at kmyers@truenorthentertainment.com if you are intersted.

Cheers.

By Jason Morris (Manfriday) (131.225.157.104) on Friday, February 07, 2003 - 09:16 am:

Some guy from my old church used an old primstar dish he found, as well as some other materials.. to make some crazy antenaa that he uses to boots the signal he recieves from his wireless internet provider.

I honestly have no idea how exactly he did it but I'll call him later today and find out.
I'll report back. he lives for this sorta thing..

By Jeff Thomann (Mastermesh) (161.130.115.254) on Tuesday, February 11, 2003 - 01:40 pm:

I've read about the primestar deally. On google, I found several stories about how such a rig can amplify the wifi signal to go 10 miles as long as there is line of sight.. I don't have the time, resources, space, or line-of-sight to mess with that sort of thing, so I put a flier out on the my neighbors' doors asking if anyone is interested, and found one person that wants in on it so far - they have cable, so if we can manage to get the two nics to link, we'll be in business - tonight they'll be buying a nic, and we are going to try to connect the network. I hope it works, but fear it may not as they are roughly 3 doors down in my apartment complex, so we'll be shooting the signal across several interior walls and probably a couple of cell phone interferance spots. I'll post here about if it works or not.

By Jeff Thomann (Mastermesh) (161.130.115.254) on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 10:01 am:

Has anybody had any luck doing Wifi networking using Belkin products? I have been playing around a little with some a Belkin Wireless Access Point, and a Belkin USB Wireless Network Adapter that I just bought from Staples (Great mail in rebate deal going on there another couple of days). I am running winows xp on the machine that has the adapter and windows 2000 in the machine with the access point. I can get the xp machine to read the signal but it won't connect Internet Explorer, or anything. Last night I fumbled around and somehow got msn messanger on the xp machine to connect, but now I've got nothing. I think there may be a driver incompatablity thing between xp's native wireless drivers and the Belkin driver, as turning off certain services on xp seems to do something... but still no connection. I downloaded the latest driver from Belkin's site - it shows the signal strength a little better than the driver off of the cd that came with the adapter, but I still can't get to the internet or see the 2000 machine under the computers in the network. I know that the thing should be working as I attached the wap to a cable router, disconnected the ethernet cord to the 2000 machine, and connected the adapter to the 200 machine, and it pulled in the signal. Has anybody got xp to do this sort of thing?!? I really am thinking it's an xp vs belkin driver type of thing going on, especially since the signal strenth looks good, but the ics just doesn't seem to be cooperating.