building to building wireless?

I just purchased a zone alarm z100G and am trying to go from one building to another...approx. 250 feet

I could not stay connected today with the z100 sitting outside. the most i saw was 30% signal strength.

on my PC on the far end is a wireless card w small internal antenna so the signal needs to go through the wall.

Does anyone have a recommendation on external antennas? or boosters?

Thanks

 

Wow, you'd need a pretty damn good antennae. You could get a 250 foot ethernet cable and use that

Really, you'd need way points or something.

 

You will need to have some (2) highgian antenna to make the link, 1 on each end. You will also need line of site, will not be able to shoot through objects. I will assume the devices you purchased were Bridges.

 

I'm not sure what "bridges" means?

Do you have any recommendations on antennas? They will both need to be external(no windows where they need to be)

Thanks

 

Here is a site the has the commercial outdoor antennas. Higher the gain the better.

http://www.hyperlinktech.com/web/antennas_2400_out_directional.php

They have these in different freq. You just need one ot match your bandwidth. I linked to 2.4ghz.

 

I'll check them out

Thanks

 

Update;

I hooked up an access point (dlink DWL-2100AP) to my router, and it boosted my signal up to 60% and speed was 48mbps. browsing the net was smokin fast!.

I should have quit there. I then set up a linksys range expander. it looked good, boosted the speed up to 54 and 100% signal. so I thought OK lets try the expander without the AP. well thats were everything went south...it wouldn't configure, and I got an error message and a BONK on my computer, and from then on nothing worked. I set everything back up like before. router> AP> desktop 250 feet away. got the signal back up to about 50% and its at 18mbps. But I cannot connect to the net now? I know the sep works because i brought my laptop down and am typing on it right now..its right next to my desktop. So something happened to the settings on my desktop to prevent connection to the net.

Any one have any ideas? I've tried the wizards, and the diagnostics( which say something about a firewall) but I never changed anything? I can connect to the net with my satellite modem on my desktop,( which I hate and why I'm doing the wireless) so I know it must just be a setting on my desktop that is preventing connectivity.

HELP!

 

Need to know if you got a valid gateway and DNS servers. See if you can ping yahoo.com and ping 66.94.234.13 . run ipconfig/all

Most AP allow you to setup them up as clients. If you did that on the NB side you would have a lot more power to send and receive from the router. But the high gain outside antenna should allow you to go several miles if you get the good ones.

 

I can't get the black screen to show up?

I typed ipconfig, and ipconfig/all, but I always get an error BONK

actually when I typr ipconfig, the black screen shows up for a split second but then goes away?

 

You need to open up the cmd window before entering the cmd.

 

sometimes if things are going well, and then my internet goes bonkers, i just use 'windows restore' or some type of restore program to bring it back to a few days ago, when things were fine.

Works for me. Can't hurt to try?

 

can you recommend the good ones......
thanks

 

I have not looked at the AP for some time now. I would recommend downloading the manuals on Linksys, Netgear and Dlink. And see if the supports bridge mode too, not all do. The better ones support AP, AP client, bridge, Multipoint Bridge, and repeater modes. I know my USR does but its a very old unit, and I do not know what chipset they are currently using.

 

OK here is what I did...I called Dell talked to a tech guy for over an hour...He was completely baffled.(and when you read what fixed it you’ll wonder why in the hell it wasn’t the very first thing he had me try?) we tried a thousand different things, restart the computer , put it in safe mode, stand on your head and clap your hands you name it I did it....



He finally said that he agreed that there was a setting that was wrong, that wouldn’t allow IE to connect....YA THINK? He said I would have to contact customer service from either the Router or the AP and have them help to reset the IP address. I have to admit. I thought that too, but I said OK and we went on our merry way.


So I hooked up my satellite to the desktop, downloaded firefox, and then unhooked the satellite and tried it...PERFECT no problem! So I’m thinking OK that will work for now. maybe forever but I still like IE and I am used to it. I was just about to say screw it and get some work done. But I thought I’d try to uninstall IE and reinstall...so I was looking around trying to find where to do this, and I ran across the “troubleshooters” window (lower left) in network and internet connections. I clicked on “internet explorer”..which opens, help and support center...clicked through a bunch of questions, got to “are you connected to the internet” tried the ping deal, found out yes I was connected, etc...then I got to are your “proxy settings correct”...well I knew they weren’t but I didn’t know what they should be. so I read through that page and then opened “internet properties”/connections, and started to try different settings under the LAN settings, click OK then try the IE...and I just kept trying different things, entering IP addresses etc.



Finally I checked “automatically detect settings” clicked OK, clicked on IE and ..WOOHOOOO. I have INTERNET HOOKUP!!!



Don’t know how it got unchecked, don’t care, cause now it works!



I now have about 50% signal strength WITHOUT the expander. and its seems plenty fast but it only reads 36mbps (sometimes it varies up and down)

I'm not sure if the expander really does anything? it shows 100% signal and 54 mbps, but it doesn't really seem be any faster. I tried my laptop, and walked away from my shop with and without the expander operating, and I lost signal in the exact same spot both ways.

I'm thinking it shows full signal strength just because the expander is close by the computer. Any ideas on testing it to see if its really worth keeping?

Thanks