networking project

[Billie Walsh]

On 09/16/2007 Harold Hartley wrote:
> Billy, what did you use for equipment to determine how much power 
> output 
> is running so you don't go over board with the power.
> I had to look back at this old thread to see who had done this as I 
> noticed that my wireless only reaches 120 feet and I need to be able 
> to 
> reach another 60 - 70 feet more.
> I just don't want to try adjusting the power output without the right 
> tools to gain the coverage I need...
> 
> Harold

I'm going to tell you a little story. It's gonna sound like
one of those "Not Shit" stories that no one ever believes. BUT,
it's true.

Our ISP uses WIFI. Right now we are on the third hop from the
fiber. When I click on a link it take 3 nano seconds for my signal
to hit the fiber. We've been working with him a lot. We are in
the process of setting up a link on 10GHz to a different repeater.
This should cut down our time to the fiber to about in half. Either
tower is about seven or eight miles from us as the crow, or radio
signal, flies.

Right now we are feeding our signal, through separate routers, to
two other people. One is off our Linksys router in our computer
room at about 125mW about a block from the house. Our end uses
just the small verticle antenna's on the router while their house
uses a 10Db gain parabolic. The other, our daughter, is from a
standard unmodified netgear router about a block in the other
direction. This one uses a 30Db gain parabolic on our end and a
10Db gain on the other. She has max strength on her end.

I haven't ever actually tested the output of the router. Don't have
anything to test it with. Just trusted the software to control it
properly. You just tell the software in the router how high you
want it. The software max's out at 250mW but I feel that is pushing
the final transistors a little hard without some serious cooling.
I do know that you can watch the signal strength on the receiving
end go up as the power is set higher.

I don't know what you need to extend the range for but if it's a
fixed position you could just try a parabolic antenna on either
end. If it's not then crank up the power to 100mW and see what
your signal strength does. We have in the past run 125mW for
extended periods without any issues.

-- 
(o:]>*HUGGLES*<[:o)
Billie Walsh
The three best words in the English Language:
"I LOVE YOU"
Pass them on!