Wireless router range and extender antennas

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve got a Linksys WRT54G wireless router/firewall/NAT box/gateway/dishwasher at home that needs a little more “oomph” in getting out to the rest of the house.

Even though it’s only about 40 feet from the router to the living room couch, reception on said couch varies between very low to none. Moving the router’s not a good choice - the only way to get it much closer would involve about 300 feet of Cat5 cable and running a new power circuit, or shelling out for wireless LAN cards for two desktop PCs and 100 feet of Cat5 and the new power circuit.

Linksys is surprisingly mum on the subject - the standard line is reception varies from location to location based on unique factors, blah, blah… Presently, they don’t have a wireless-G repeater, like they do for original “B” While looking for something unrelated, I came across “range-extender” antennas at Radio Shack. For $30, I can get a pair of high-gain antennas (They say most routers have 2.2 dBi gain antennas, and these are 5.5 dBi) They also say they’re designed for Linksys. Has anyone experienced these yet? Are they worth the price?

2

I haven’t had any experience with the range extender antennas, but from what I’ve read, the new antenna should give you 50% more range. I’m inclined to believe it, since people are successfully using Pringles cans and soup cans as antennas. If you went that route, maybe you could use the dishwasher function of your router to keep them clean. :slight_smile:

3

I don’t know about 50% more range, but signal strength at the couch went from “Very Low” to “Good” and that’s all that matters. :slight_smile:

For anyone watching, the longer antennas were worth the price, especially since it’s effective, cheap and there’s no configuration issues. Just be sure to turn the router off before removing the antennas - no point in risking fried transmitters - I’m surprised that the things came with no instructions.