high gain Antennas what do I look for?

I am new to this wireless thing. I upgraded my firmware on my Linksys WRT54G and I also read getting high gain antennas would also help.

I have no idea what is good. Anyone with knowledge have any pointers?

 

What is the problem? Why do you think you need a high gain antenna?

 

laptop wireless keeps dropping but, it is much much better since I upgrade my firmware on this Linksys WRT54G.

I was thinking it may help around my apartment also.

 

If you are only in an apartment you shouldnt need a high gain one. My guess is that it is interfering with other signals. If you have it set on the default channel of 6 try switching it to either 1 or 11 and see if your results improve. Also try reinstalling your laptops wireless card driver.

What signal strength do you have on your laptop?

 

Install NetStumbler and put MIDI audio on. Move around your place to see where signals are weak and strong. Then decide if you need an antenna.

Cheers

 

Randall_Lind,
I want to get the old version of this router and have been reading quite a bit about it recently. What version of this router do you have? Which firmware did you upgrade to? If you are able to put the opensource Tomato or DD-WRT firmware on this router there is an option to boost the antenna power!! I think this is very cool and this is my main reason to look into this router. Apparently the default power is 42mW but you can boost it all the way to something like 251mW ! , but you have to be careful not to burn the thing out. So people recommend that you only raise it up to 70mW.
I want to do this and use these high gain antennas. I saw a few on ebay but some sellers claim that there are imitation ones made from China that are not the same as the original ones made for the router. Don't know if there is any difference. I am just starting to look into this.

I myself want more info on this whole topic, but this is what I have found so far from my research.

Check out some of these links that talk about this and the high gain antenna's.

Discussion 1

Discussion 2

 

When I am next to my router I get singal strength 60-73% living room, Kitchen drops to 47%, Bedroom which is right on the other side of my desk blocked off by a wall drops to 50%.

I was thinking High grain would keep it in the 70 range no matter where I am. I use WirelessMon and I am the only one on channel 7 in my area. My router is setup as a gateway should I change that to router? I wasn't sure so left it.

The Fire Snake:

Linksys WRT54G ver 1.1 firmware update from Linksys site is 4.21.1 I got DD-WRT working all but wireless so had to flash back to 4.21.1

All I want is a strong 24/7 connection signal sick of surfing the net then all a sudden no signal. I have no problem spending up to $50 to fix my issue.

 

You may have to give up that Linksys and find another router; your signal problems may be coming from a physical defect in the router itself, which is not something you can overcome with high-gain antennae and the like.

Also, you should keep it set as Gateway if that's the only router on your system; otherwise you'll lose DNS capabilities.

 

Ok, have you tried the Tomato Firmware? It is supposed to be easier to deal with than DD-WRT. Try that and try to boost your antenna transmission/reception and see if that helps. If you are still having problems, then I would look into another new router like Shyster1 said instead of spending more money on high gain antennas. Possibly an "N" router....

 

I just installed it what should I set transmit power to it is set to 42 now. My laptop does B/G why would I buy a N router?

 

Wait, you do not get 100% next to the router?

 

I read that many people set it to 70. I don't know if there is a hard number I can give you since I am just starting to experiment with this, but set too high it can burn out the router. So I would try 70, since I read an article of a guy how had set it to 70 and left it there for a year with no problems. i will see if I can post the link when I get to my laptop.

Also, yes you can't take advantage of the speed of an N router, but maybe you can take advantage of its range? It is supposed to extend the range of the signal it transmits quite a bit over b/g routers.

 

widows says 100% all the time but WirelessMon says what I posted.

 

I read the same 70-75 was the safe zone and anything over 75 is useless. Playing around signal gets up to 80% according to wirelessmon

 

Ok, cool! So is this amount of signal strength satisfactory to you?

 

yes but still going to get high gain ant if price is right.

 

There are some silly looking router antenna mods that actually work

 

Such as?.....