Antenna setup for wireless, advice needed

nin2010

There's a local free wireless hotspot that I can get a signal from if I sit on the balcony in my house but I can't get it once I'm actually inside the house or see any of the other advertised wireless networks in the area. I'm guessing they may have used some form of foil in the insulation that's causing interferance.

I'm not too keen on putting up an aerial outside the house as it's in my landlords contract that no dishes or aerials should be put up on the walls. So I was thinking of putting an aerial in the attic of the house and running some lossless coax cable down into the sitting room.

Can anyone give me advice on good websites they know with information about doing this or some advice on what the best antenna would be, omnidirectional, bidirectional etc.. I have read a fair bit on different websites but most are focused on building your own antenna which I don't want to do, I'd rather just buy one that's recommended.

Thanks in advance.

nin2010

The other option may be to put a panel antenna on the wall of the balcony and run a cable through the block wall to the sitting room. If I take that option, is there a way to run the coax to some form of wall panel(for the sake of neatness) that I can then connect a coax to the antenna connector of an wireless nic?

One more question, can I run the coax to some form of wireless repeater and repeat the signal inside the room/house rather than directly to a wireless nic?

eddhorse

With all this work and price you could get your own broadband !

But if you are going to be stingey about it a patch antenna is what you need.
That will have to be outside and connect to a wireless access point in bridge mode or directly into your wireless NIC.

My advice is get BB in your flat and if the landlord doesnt sort it out then move.

nin2010

eddhorse wrote: »

With all this work and price you could get your own broadband !

But if you are going to be stingey about it a patch antenna is what you need.
That will have to be outside and connect to a wireless access point in bridge mode or directly into your wireless NIC.

My advice is get BB in your flat and if the landlord doesnt sort it out then move.

I got myself a panel antenna, pigtail adaptor and a Linksys WRT54GS Router that I can flash with DD-WRT firmware and use it as a repeater and also allows the router to use it's two antennae independently. For anyone who is interested how to do this, you connect the panel antenna to one of the antenna RP-TNC connectors(you may need to buy a pigtail adaptor cable to convert from N type or RP-SMA) and run the coax outside to the balcony and fix it to the wall, set that antenna up in DD-WRT to be a receiving antenna. You configure the remaining rubber ducky antenna to both receive and transmit the wireless signals around the internal building.

It's quite a bit of fun getting it working if you are interested and it's a cheap alternative to paying a monthly fee if you have a college or similar hotspot in your area. The ALFA AWUS036H is a powerful USB wireless adaptor that will help boost the received signal at your desktop/laptop also.

You need to check what version numbers of the WRT54GS/WRT54GL/WRT54G are compatible with DD-WRT as some are not. Also certain WRT54G routers do not have detachable antenna so are not suitable for this setup. I paid 18euro for the panel antenna, 6 euro for the pigtail, 24 euro for the wireless router, all bought on ebay. So that's the bones of €50 which isn't bad.

The Alfa wireless USB adapator was €35 on ebay also if you want to add that to your setup.

Fuzzy Clam

Just hope that whoever admins the hotspot doesn't notice excessive usage and bans your mac address:p

nin2010

Fuzzy Clam wrote: »

Just hope that whoever admins the hotspot doesn't notice excessive usage and bans your mac address:p

Naw, I won't be downloading anything on it. I just need it for browsing.

Besides you can always use http://www.alobbs.com/macchanger/

pieface_ie

Fuzzy Clam: Just hope that whoever admins the hotspot doesn't notice excessive usage and bans your mac address

macchanger!

As people have said it does seem quiet excessive just for free BB.

If i remeber correctly i recieved a type of antenna/plate piece(cant think of the name of it sorry) with my alfa usb,i then bought seperatley a long cabe that attaches to the antenna and the card,it would save you alot of hassle of routing cables through attic etc,if you just stuck the antenna/plate device at the window and ran the cable to the area you use the computer?

nin2010

pieface_ie wrote: »

macchanger!

As people have said it does seem quiet excessive just for free BB.

If i remeber correctly i recieved a type of antenna/plate piece(cant think of the name of it sorry) with my alfa usb,i then bought seperatley a long cabe that attaches to the antenna and the card,it would save you alot of hassle of routing cables through attic etc,if you just stuck the antenna/plate device at the window and ran the cable to the area you use the computer?

Well it's not really a lot of hassle, besides it's fun for me to get this working. The only limitation was that I didn't want it to cost a lot and it's been pretty cheap to get the stuff I need. The DD-WRT firmware has a gui so it's not so difficult to configure it in the way I need. Just put a tick box in the repeater option and change the dropdowns on the antenna to how I want them to behave.

nin2010

Got the whole setup working perfectly now. Pretty sweet!

If anyone else is interested in setting up something similar give me a shout and I'll do my best to help you out.