Strong Wireless Adapter

[Irishgi@aol.com]

OK my situation is of course, I'm far away from my router. I know things like this, are like discussing snake oil. Depends on so many factors, walls, interference ect... My main router is in  another house to be exact, so a repeater or a powerline really won't exactly help. Router transmissions are regulated by the FCC, and it's a good router with 3x 5 dBi antennas so I don't think changing that out would do diddly squat. It's a DLink DGL-4500. Which is dual band, but only 1 at a time. I have read that 2.4 is better at range than 5.0, is that true? and I guess up to 450 Mbs being N - so the site says. It's a decent router but I do need to buy a new ac adapter for it (gotta wiggle (something) it for it to work), and it needs to be reset quite frequently. Updated to firmware 1.23NA

That being said, my current wireless adapter is a Rosewill RNX-N180UBE which is 2.4 Ghz, up to 150 mbs with a 5 dBi antena - with it I currently have 44% signal strength, 92% link quality, (Tx = 30 Mbs Rx = 1 Mbs in the description of it, not real values). I can't find any info on the power output.

It's had it's use but looking around the market of external USB adapters, I figure I should go bigger. Try to aim for 65%-75% realistically

I am contemplating that bearextender, coupled with the bigger antenna. The two in total is near $75 so it's not cheap. The antenna is 7 dBi, and it is boosted to 1200 mW but it would be absurd a USB port could support that. Same band and output as what I'm using. Though it seems pretty commercial.

The other option is the Alpha AWUS036H It comes with a 9 dBi antenna, 500 mW - remember we are talking about what a 5v usb port? But it's dual band 150/300 ect.. never mind it's $50 in total, $25 less than the one above. Alpha does have a single frequency model that's stronger (2.4 gHz @ 1000 mW) so that's an option also. But lower frequency rates = lower data transfer (150 Mbs) though in the end does it really matter? The bottleneck seems to be the data speed & voltage of a USB port anyway. The notebook for use on this has 3x USB 2.0 ports.

I am sorry if there are posts like this all over the place, I've found old ones. Posts about adapters in RV's ect. Most aren't convulsive , outdated, shady for a reason I guess but still. Most official adapter reviews are for pen drive adapters, and I've spent hours on this.

If there's any advice of better options than the ones I've listed above I would appreciate it,  thanks a ton.

[dzonidev]

In all honesty I hate DLink, I have a really bad experience with their consumer grade gear. Say what you want about TP-Link but it never failed on me. Been using it for 4 years now.

 

On topic, would you mind saying what kind of distances are we talking about, are there any obstacles apart from walls? As for 5GHz, yes it has a lower range than 2.4.

 

In all honesty, I would do a wireless bridge with another router. You can find very powerful 2.4Ghz wireless routers, that support DDWRT if they can't do wireless bridging in their own firmware. The signal you get from the wireless bridge you can broadcast again with a different SSID.

 

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Repeater_Bridge

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Wireless_Bridge

[Irishgi@aol.com]

Ha, yeah I know there's a ton of people who hate d-link. But what can I say, bought this one say 4-5 years ago, 3 years it was in use in Malaga, Spain on 50hz 220ac, and now it's back in New York on 60hz 110ac. It's been around. Anyway it's 2 houses with a vacant lot in between. I's say about 100 feet away, no trees, just plain line of sight. the router passes through 2 walls of the other house including the outside wall made of just 2x4's, insulation, drywall, and vinyl siding (another 25 feet). So 125-135 feet I'd say + 2 walls. I sit in the closest window of the other. If I were to do a repeater I's doubtful if the signal is strong enough here to pull it off in this house. Unless I put it in the lot in between the houses. Without an external wifi adapter at all this notebook barely gets about 15%-25% signal with it half out the window. I'd love it because then I could use more devices than just 1 notebook in my second house. I just think being 2 separate buildings, and the distance, it's not feasible, maybe. Thanks

[Blebekblebek]

with the same / or less amount of money you can get a wireless router and set them as repeater

it would serve you better in the long run

[dzonidev]

Ha, yeah I know there's a ton of people who hate d-link. But what can I say, bought this one say 4-5 years ago, 3 years it was in use in Malaga, Spain on 50hz 220ac, and now it's back in New York on 60hz 110ac. It's been around. Anyway it's 2 houses with a vacant lot in between. I's say about 100 feet away, no trees, just plain line of sight. the router passes through 2 walls of the other house including the outside wall made of just 2x4's, insulation, drywall, and vinyl siding (another 25 feet). So 125-135 feet I'd say + 2 walls. I sit in the closest window of the other. If I were to do a repeater I's doubtful if the signal is strong enough here to pull it off in this house. Unless I put it in the lot in between the houses. Without an external wifi adapter at all this notebook barely gets about 15%-25% signal with it half out the window. I'd love it because then I could use more devices than just 1 notebook in my second house. I just think being 2 separate buildings, and the distance, it's not feasible, maybe. Thanks

 

There are better chances that the Wireless Bridge/Repeater will serve you better, than a beefed up notebook antenna With the repeater you don't have to sit on the window you can go around the house. Not to mention you would have signal for other devices as well.

[Irishgi@aol.com]

Ok, so I dug up an old netgear XXX2000v3, flashed it with dd-wrt, got everything up and running. It connected to the access point at just 20-25%, but still at speedtest I was getting near 10mbs download vs 1.5-2 on the adapter I had, yeah, it's a lot better.

Problem is, even after watching this, which is the exact router I'm using, It's not rebroadcasting it's own ssid. I'm not entirely sure what's going on, It has internet via lan, but through the wireless adapter all I see is my old router. It's strange

 

Edit: 

OK I'm not going crazy, according to this Client bridged (routed) does not rebroadcast the ssid, and everything has to be wired to the secondary router. So how did that guy do it? gah

Same options as he had. Just a thought. Could it be that the primary router isn't flashed with dd-wrt?

 

- Ok it's kinda funny searching for routers that are fully ddwrt compliant. I'd prefer dual band - just don't want to get out-dated. found one one on ebay for $10, found others for $300. Is there anything I can trust between say 40$-70$. This one I'm pretty sure can't repeat. Yeah I'm better off than I was yesterday, thank you.

 

[Irishgi@aol.com]

OK I figured it out. Simple things but hey when It's your 1'st time doing it, took me 24 hrs to setup anyway. It's rebroadcasting it's own ssid now. Everything is fine. With the old wifi adapter only Downloading was 1.5-2 Mb/s. LAN wired to the repeater now I can get upwards of 10 Mb/s. On the repeater's wifi It's about 4 Mb/s. Still twice as good as it was.

 

Thanks again, Until I wire up both houses with internet got a feeling this is as good as it's going to get. Maybe a stronger repeater in the near future but not tomorrow. Any advise on that below $100/$80 would still be appreciated. I'd want it to be DD-WRT compliant, that's for sure. Plus side is now I know how to set it up. Lastly would there be any benefits/complications of changing the repeater's ssid to the same as the primary router. Thanks for everything

[dzonidev]

OK I figured it out. Simple things but hey when It's your 1'st time doing it, took me 24 hrs to setup anyway. It's rebroadcasting it's own ssid now. Everything is fine. With the old wifi adapter only Downloading was 1.5-2 Mb/s. LAN wired to the repeater now I can get upwards of 10 Mb/s. On the repeater's wifi It's about 4 Mb/s. Still twice as good as it was.

 

Thanks again, Until I wire up both houses with internet got a feeling this is as good as it's going to get. Maybe a stronger repeater in the near future but not tomorrow. Any advise on that below $100/$80 would still be appreciated. I'd want it to be DD-WRT compliant, that's for sure. Plus side is now I know how to set it up. Lastly would there be any benefits/complications of changing the repeater's ssid to the same as the primary router. Thanks for everything

 

Alright, if I were you I'd probably be knees deep in dirt digging a trench for tubing and the STP cable inside it, by now....

 

As for the wireless router, go to this LINK, once you see a router you like, type it's model name in the search. Finding a fully compliant router is not as easy as some of us would want. Generally speaking if it's on the list it works.

 

Dual Band... Well this is a pretty killer one TP-LINK or this TP-LINK however they seem to have some compatibility issues with DDWRT and OpenWRT. They support it, in the latest builds but there are some issues with the AC card and it's firmware. You could try doing a WDS bridge, but that thing works once in a blue moon.

 

So, if you want a dual band under 100$ and DDWRT well you are pretty limited. I'd try something with the Cisco badge, see if that's supported...