Community Forums

Cliffy · 05-20-2013, 09:02 AM

Has anyone tried the passive signal boosters that go up to 2 watts to get better reception of CG wifi? I'm in the steep learning curve on this stuff, did a "search" and didn't find much here. The boosters fit inline with the router antenna (come with pigtail for hookup). Wondering if it might be a better solution than and external antenna on a metal skin TT.

Right now I'm looking at designing a wall feed through of one of the smaller high gain antennas (that usually mount on the router) just above my door, to feed my router mounted inside a cabinet just fwd of the door. This way I can just install the antenna when I hook up and remove for driving by standing on the step and not have a big outside antenna to deal with every time. The little antenna would stick up above the top of the TT.

puttin · 05-20-2013, 12:34 PM

Cliffy,

Here's an inexpensive wifi antenna that can stick to a window.:

Alfa High Power Desktop WiFi Antenna

whem2fish · 05-20-2013, 12:55 PM

That is close to what I run to get Internet 300 feet from my router google a links router with third party file (DDRT) I have 500 mw 2 watts I believe is too much (illegal)

Izzyblueye · 05-20-2013, 05:16 PM

I just sent my Alfa back. It did not work at all. Called their support and they could not make it work. They admiitted they have a lot of problems with them.

docj · 05-20-2013, 11:01 PM

Quite often at campgrounds the problem is not being able to receive the wifi access point's signal, it is having enough transmit power to send a signal back to it and establish a connection. Having a better antenna may improve your reception, but it is unlikely to make much of a difference with respect to getting the access point to see you. That's where routers with amplifiers and better antennas get into the act.

Cliffy · 05-20-2013, 11:09 PM

Found a Linksys router on ebay with 3rd party installed. The seller has 2400 5 star ratings and he has contacted me 3 times since the order was made to keep me up dated on shipping. Tracking shows it's here tomorrow. I'll be installing it later this week to see how it does. Found a bulkhead fitting to install on my outside wall to feed the antenna into the TT. Looking at small high gain antennas now to try a couple.

myredracer · 05-21-2013, 01:40 AM

We just got the latest version of the Alfa (ending in NHR) with 2 watts and tried it at our cg on the weekend. Very disappointed. Fortunately only 30$ or so invested in it. We ordered this one because of the positive reviews on it.

About 300' from the cg Wifi antenna, we could only get around 12% signal strength at best and was usually around 2 or 4%. The connection often dropped out. Even when we walked right up to the cg antenna, the signal strength only went up to 32%. We bought the little directional antenna as well and it did not help at all.... When it was raining out, we could not get a connection either.

After 3 days of using it, we also discovered that once people were getting up in the morning and logging into their computers, the Wifi connection got so slow it was almost unuseable and often was not useable at all until later in the day. This may simple be crappy cg Wifi service though?

It is possible that we do not have it set up correctly or optimized and DW is going to look into that. She wants to look at getting service from Verizon for a monthly fee. Then we'll have something that's good and reliable and fast wherever we want to go.