Antenna recommendations

[Jeff Quast]

On 9/16/06, John McDermon <jcm at uclalumni.net> wrote:
> If the AP was going to be in the center of the house an omni would
> make sense. Since you say it's going to be at the end, I'd suggest a
> Vagi or a Panel with an appropriately wide beam.
>
(top posting bad)

>
> On Sep 16, 2006, at 20:14, Snow Wolf wrote:
>
> > I have an Atheros 802.11B/G Mini-pci card and a Soekris box.  The box
> > will be in the end of a long house (100-120') and I'd like to
> > penetrate thru its multiple walls.  I don't care about bleeding thru
> > the near wall to the outside because I'll be securing it anyway, so I
> > was thinking about an Omni antenna.  Any better suggestions?  DB
> > rating pointers?
> >

I have found yagi antennea to perform poorly through surfaces. I
beleive the signals bounce at small angles as they travel through
solids, and tend to be scattered too much to hit a Yagi Unda at a
predictable angle. The angle needed to hit a Yagi is very directional,
which makes it ideal in some situations.

I havn't found it to perform well through surfaces, though. Using a
yagi through walls, it seemed it didn't really matter if I pointed it
at the target or up to 30 degrees off the targeted. The signal
strength remained the same, leading me to beleive waves bounce and
change angles alot through housing structures.

You may find an Omni to be cheap, and reusable should you decide to
convert your setup later. A great 8.5dBi Omni can be had for $46USD on
netgate.com, and may very easily cover your house from one end alone.
If it doesn't fully reach the other end, I recommend making a
reflection sheild:

Bend a piece of tin at a 20-80 degree angle (experiment). This tin
should be 18-32" wide, and as long(tall) as your antennea. Place it
with the inner angle facing the inside of your house between your
antennea and the outer wall. You will need to experiment with the
distance between the reflection sheild and the antenna (keep it fairly
close), and the angle. Using tin will make it easy to change

This will make an omni more -like- a patch antennea, but allow you to
keep the versatility and cost of an omni, should your setup change
some day.

I do not own any sector or patch antenneas, so I have no personal
experience to share on these. I highly support negate as they support
unix operating systems, listing compatabilities with their cards and
so on.