WiFi repeaters, extenders, enhancers, elongators, whatever...

[SSteve]

Weak park wifi. Lots of solutions. Alas, no "one size fits all" fix.

I've read some discussion about Ubiquiti products in other threads and looked into them a bit. Both DW and I each have our own laptops and for us, Ubiquiti offers a product line that interests us. We don't want a(n) USB system unless it can feed two or more laptops/PCs at the same time. Haven't heard about one of those yet. Jefatech, while looking sound, seems to replicate hardware we already have (but with a proprietary twist). Back to the story.

The Nanostation boasts a directional antenna. I prefer an omni-directional antenna on the roof for any number of reasons, not the least of which is I'm lazy and don't want to go about aiming the antenna every time I move parks. I know there are very good arguments for directional antennas, but there you are.

As things are now, when there is no joy connecting to the park wifi (or there is no park wifi) I use our Palm Treo Pro running WMwifiRouter. With a good cell signal, its better than dial-up and sometimes better than the park wifi. Sometimes, the signal is marginal or worse, so we are out of luck. I've been looking into the Wilson RV / Trucker Roof Mount Cellular Antenna (301119) Cell Phone antenna to help with that.

Here's where my rambling hopefuly starts to make some sense.

I saw a post from Texnet about the Ubiquiti system he uses and he mentioned the Ubiquiti "Bullet". I looked into it, but Ubiquiti really doesn't seem to have fleshed out the story. Without any other info, it seems the "Bullet" is a Nanostation minus the built in antenna. But, they do list some basics. One claim that caught my eye was it will work with "any" antenna.

My question #1 is would the Wilson antenna fit the description of "any"? Question #2 is would it work well?

Anything I can get to do double duty (the Wilson antenna, and yes, I understand I probably can't get the antenna to work both tasks simultaneously) and it works well, I win!

I've seen some pretty clever mounting solutions which allow the antenna to be set up from the ground and I plan to steal one or two. Actually, now that I think about it, these solutions would also lend themselves well to the Nanostation as well.

Let's stick with the "Bullet" for now.

Sorry about the length of this post. I tried to build in as many answers to upcoming questions as I could.

Steve

[wa8yxm]

With a directional antenna.. You can "Cheat" a bit by using a ladder pole mount.. (Look at the folks who have a flag pole hooked to their ladder) you use a pole that attaches to the side of the ladder, but extends down far enough you can grab it with your hand (you also want it to extend UP above the roofs of the neighor's RV's so you get a clear view of wherever they hid the router)

Then you can aim it with both feet on the ground.. Tighten the clamp and you are done

A program called "net Stumbler" can assist you in that it can quickly querry the Wi-Fi adapter and show you the relative strenth of the assorted routers near you.

Basically, in this mode.. it's pressing the "REFRESH" button every second.

The WILSON antennas I have seen were not for Wi-Fi but for Cell Phone reception.. Same comments apply by the way.

http://www.radiolabs.com/products/an...fi-antenna.php Is currently mounted on the 5th wheel next door to me.. They tell me it works well

[alvinc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SSteve Weak park wifi. Lots of solutions. Alas, no "one size fits all" fix. The Nanostation boasts a directional antenna. I prefer an omni-directional antenna on the roof for any number of reasons, not the least of which is I'm lazy and don't want to go about aiming the antenna every time I move parks. I know there are very good arguments for directional antennas, but there you are. As things are now, when there is no joy connecting to the park wifi (or there is no park wifi) I use our Palm Treo Pro running WMwifiRouter. With a good cell signal, its better than dial-up and sometimes better than the park wifi. Sometimes, the signal is marginal or worse, so we are out of luck. I've been looking into the Wilson RV / Trucker Roof Mount Cellular Antenna (301119) Cell Phone antenna to help with that. My question #1 is would the Wilson antenna fit the description of "any"? Question #2 is would it work well? Anything I can get to do double duty (the Wilson antenna, and yes, I understand I probably can't get the antenna to work both tasks simultaneously) and it works well, I win! Steve

Groan, my first reply was killed off by a browser failure.... this one will be short.

Look at the HW2R1 from Hawking ($200), it has two radios, one for communicating with the RV park AP on its own external antenna. The second radio if for the local AP that you would configure to be on a different WiFi channel than the RV park. Other solutions that use the same radio for repeating the WiFi signal, will result in over a 50% reduction in network maximum bandwidth (remember the number of collisions will over double).

Configuration is to mount an antenna on the outside of your RV, with as short a cable as possible to the HW2R1 (high frequencies = very high cable loss). The other two antennas of the HW2R1 are for the local AP. When you arrive at a new RV park, log into the HW2R1 and set it up for the RV park AP, select a local AP WiFi channel and then use your laptops for Internet access.

If you want to be friendly, configure your local AP with the same method of connection as the RV park and let your nearby neighbors use your AP. This will not affect anyone's security because their computers better be hardened enough to handle the Wild Wild Web at the RV park AP.

BTW: the Wilson Antenna would be a poor choice for the HW2R1 external antenna. WiFi is at frequencies 2412-2462 MHz (b/g/n), and 5180-5825 MHz (n), the Wilson 301119 Antenna is for 806-894 MHz and 1850-1990 MHz. No overlap at all. Something like the Hawking HAO9SIP would be better; 2 foot antenna that I would attach to the tilt-up TV antenna.

[idenphones]

Our solution was to mount an omni directional, 9db (claimed) gain antenna, with a home made ground plane on the crankup square tubing of the batwing antenna. The WiFi antenna is almost aways vertical if you do this.

I then ran about 6 feet of RG 400u down the mast and into the coach where is is connected to one side of the Hawking HWREN1.

Having the antenna on the batwing allows me to crank it up if necessary and when it is not cranked up it is still low enough so that I don't need to worry about low flying bridges as the omni antenna is only about 18 inches long.

On the average I would say that we increased our range just about double if not more.

Cheap too!

[kf6gse]

Another solution is to simply put something like the Cushcraft wifi antenna on the roof and connect it to some router inside with DDWRT V24 third party firmware installed. Then set the inside router the RV to repeater mode and walah! Your laptops can now connect to the park's wifi Access Point with only about a 60 dollar investment for antenna and router.

[alvinc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kf6gse Another solution is to simply put something like the Cushcraft wifi antenna on the roof and connect it to some router inside with DDWRT V24 third party firmware installed. Then set the inside router the RV to repeater mode and walah! Your laptops can now connect to the park's wifi Access Point with only about a 60 dollar investment for antenna and router.

This solution is inexpensive and works well for one user and very little other traffic on the same channel. However, it does halve the effective bandwidth, and creates more congestion on the WiFi Channel, especially when many people are accessing the same AP (as in an RV park).

To explain, its all about signal pollution.

Lets say we have a good 802.11b connection using the large outside antenna that allows up to 11 Mbit transmission rate. Because the the "repeater" is retransmitting the data on the same channel that it received it on, the effective rate will be 5.5 Mbits. The retransmitted data is going back out the large antenna. This means that one user can reduce the entire park Wifi bandwidth to 50% (will that user is transmitting).

For email and web browsing the duty cycle (everyone is doing short bursts of traffic) will save the day . But if the repeater user starts a video or large download, they will keep the park throughput low for an extended period.

In addition the repeater user will dominate the air traffic because their input into the AP will stronger than most users in the park (good for repeater user, bad for everyone else).

There is a bright spot: If one user has a same channel repeater, then everyone around them will also benefit from the repeater. That is, as long as there is only one repeater.

Now consider what happens if 3 or 4 users have repeaters, this means every message is being repeated back to the same channel 4 times.

Don't get me wrong, the same channel repeater is a good idea in a home other places where there is likely to be only one repeater in the area. Multiple same channel repeater can cause major throughput issues when several are used against the same AP. I guess this makes me a non-fan of the JEFA solution for RVs, because RV owners are often accessing shared AP's. The price is right though.

If the RV park supports the 802.11g protocol the situation is a little better, but only in that the bandwidth is higher (54 Mbits).

References: Extending WLAN Range with Repeaters
Extend Wi-Fi range with repeaters

Another solution if you have the expertise: use the DDWRT V24 firmware with two inexpensive routers to get the same effect as the Hawking HW2R1.

[SSteve]

Idenphones,

What brand/type antenna did you use?

The one wa8yxm suggested looks good, but is pretty pricey ($150ish). I'm looking for something quite a bit less expensive.

Thanks,
Steve

[alvinc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SSteve Idenphones, What brand/type antenna did you use? The one wa8yxm suggested looks good, but is pretty pricey ($150ish). I'm looking for something quite a bit less expensive. Thanks, Steve

The antenna that wa8yxm suggested is a 15db model and is 5 ft long. It is fiberglass and designed to last 10-20 years, in essence this is a commercial antenna. Cheaper antennas will either be flimsier or have less gain. I personally think that for most RV parks the smaller 8db model that is 16" long would work just fine. An 8db model at RadioLabs is $80.

Why should the shorter antenna work fine? Given that the antenna that comes on the router is probably a unity (no gain) antenna, at best. Having 8db of gain and getting the antenna outside is a big bonus. Note: you will lose approx 1 db of gain just from the a 10 ft cable.

If you look at the RadioLabs lineup for omnidirectional antennas they are Omni 8 ($80), Omni 11 ($100), Omni 11 ($120), Omni 15 ($150).

Fry's sells the TrendNet Wifi 8db antenna for $45, look around you might find a 2.4 GHz antenna you like. Be sure to pay attention to the cabling; both length and the connectors on each end.

[idenphones]

Steve,

This past winter we went to the Webster Flea Market in Florida and several of the vendors were selling a magnetic USB omni antenna WiFi extender for $40.00. I will check to see if I still have the docs for it and will post them.

I love toys so I bought one. The darn thing has an Atheros chip in it with a bidirectional amplifier and works really good but would only work for one persons computer at a time.

The antenna that it came with was advertised as 9 db gain so I swapped it out with a 7 db gain antenna and used the 9 db gain antenna for my crank up.

I used a piece of heat shrink to hold the antenna straight and a dab of silicone to waterproof it.

Whatever gain the antenna is easily makes up for the cable and connector loss and now my crank up, (if you want to) WiFi antenna works good with the Hawking repeater.

When we are parked in Florida, we are almost on top of a hill. The WiFi reception was medium rare to ok before for us. The neighbors around us had to lug their computers to the office or pool to be usable. With the repeater, everyone is happy and has a good to great signal.

Our neighbor a few coaches down the hill emailed me the other day wanting to know when to expect us back as it was too hot to sit outside the office to check his email!

[idenphones]

Steve,

I found a picture of the antenna on the web. It is called a Starbase WiFi antenna.

Cheaper on the web @ $29.95