I am setting up a new (first) wireless network.

I have Direcway satellite broadband with their DWS6000 modem using an
Ethernet connection to a desktop using XP Home. This is my office. My
computer is by a window on an outside wall. The distance to the highest
point is 10' from my computer.

I have a clear line of sight to my house where I have a desktop also by
a window on an outside wall. The distance to the highest point is 12'
from that computer.

I plan to purchase a Linksys WRT54GS  Wireless-G Broadband Router with
SpeedBooster for the office desktop and a Linksys WMP54GS Wireless-G
PCI Adapter with SpeedBooster for my home desktop. My desktops are
relatively new with 2.5+ Gig processors, 512 Kb memory, and 60+ Mb hard
drives. No multitasking, no intensive graphics, etc. I am in a very
rural setting with no interference from other networks.

I want to use the network to share the satellite internet service so I
can cancel the dial-up at home, and to share files like Money
occasionally.

I plan to use high-gain directional antennae on both ends.

Please comment on:

1. Specific antennae suggestions and vendors.

2. Connections from the router and adapter to the external antennae
   a. Removal of included antennae, connectors needed , coax suggested.
   b. Since the router has two antennae, what to do with the second
output.

3. Any problems with the setup and hardware that I may not know. I have
replaced drives, added memory and PCI cards, but haven't "hacked."

4. Any Linksys downloads or third party software I should get.

Many thanks.

Skip antennas, they don't work that well. Use a MIMO router such as the
Belkin Pre-N or the D-Link 624M.

JB wrote:
I've not tried a MIMO device yet, but antennas don't work well? You
weren't serious, were you?

Very serious. Whether an antenna will work for you depends on your
environment. In mine, I get maybe 50 more feet of coverage with a variety of
high-gain antennas. With MIMO, I suddenly bumped up from 300 to 1500.

I tried Belkin Pre-N. The router was fine; however, I could not get the
desktop Pre-N adapter/card to work. I tried installing it in both
desktops. Several times. The computer would recognize the PCI adapter,
but the installation wizard on the Belkin CD would not recognize the
PCMCIA card that slipped into it. The LEDs on the PCMCIA card would not
light. I downloaded the latest installation software from their site.
Got a second desktop Pre-N adapter/card. Same results. I am very good
at following directions. The Belkin support people always assumed that
I was screwing up some step. I really wished it had worked.

Okay - but MIMO is still the answer for you, I bet. D-Link, Linksys, and a
few others make them, too.

Show quoteHide quote

JB wrote:
Yeah, my crappy old antennas only let me get a few miles range with low
power devices. Guess I'd better switch to MIMO.

Roger, while you and JB duke it out, mind dropping some pearls of
wisdom my way? I see yagis and parabolics, 16 dBi or so, for around
$40. Is that the way to go? Which end? Or both? I understand I need a
RP TNC Male (Reverse Polarity) into the WRT54G and a RP SMA Male
(Reverse Polarity) into the WMP 54G. What coax do I need for 10' and
15' to the antennae? Is there stuff off the shelf? Many thanks.

Lee Hickok wrote:
Parabolic antennas are usually very high gain (there are exceptions of
course) and yagis work just fine. But for ease of handling, mounting and
appearance, I'd go with panel antennas. If you're not used to them,
think of them as little gray plastic pizza boxes. Look at
www.fab-corp.com for some ideas.

The connection between the radio and the antenna should be kept as short
as possible because signal loss gets worse with the length of the coax
cable. As much as possible, make the connection between the computer and
the radio reach as close to the antenna as you can. That won't hurt the
signal. It's the length of cable between the radio and the antenna that
can cause problems. I'd use nothing less than LMR240 coax but I'd prefer
LMR400 cable for this type of connection.

I'd prefer to use a panel antenna at each end of the connection. This
narrows the signal down instead of spreading it out 360*. For a distance
of 210' I wouldn't think you'd need a really stong antenna, but I'm not
familiar with your particular radios. At the present I'm using a 9dbi
antenna to connect to my access point that's at about two miles away.
I've used 19dbi and 13dbi antennas here and can't really tell any
performance difference, but the 9dbi is much smaller and easier to work
with.

Funny. But how much? I'm talking about consumer antennas that home users
would buy.

Show quoteHide quote

JB wrote:
If you look over the fab-corp.com site as suggested, you'll see the same
9dbi antenna I'm using for $24.99. It's a Maxrad WISP panel antenna. If
the cost is prohibitive, a home-brew cantenna or other design can be
made for very little to nothing, but I find that $25 spent on a
reliable, well-built antenna is money well spent.

And you are saying that antenna adds 2 miles to your router?

Show quoteHide quote

JB wrote:

Sort of. I'm using an outdoor style wireless bridge at my home,
connected by about a 1½ foot long piece of LMR400 coax to this smallish
9dbi panel antenna. My access point is on a short tower (about 45' tall)
on top of a hill, about 2 miles away. The access point is using a 120°
sector antenna (14dbi if I remember correctly).

I also have an 8dbi omni antenna on another access point at a different
location about 1/4 mile away that I can connect to with roughly the same
signal strength and speed. None of this equipment is particularly
powerful, it's just good quality.

I also use some plain vanilla Office Depot pieces from time to time. I
have one connection that is a DLink PCI card with the little rubber
ducky antenna in a house about 250 feet away from my omni antenna. It's
just fine with about 50% signal strength. At about 500-600 feet away I
have a customer with an external bridge and rubber ducky antenna that's
been stable for months, but it is a better quality radio.

So how much does all of that cost? Because, I suspect a MIMO router costs
less.

Show quoteHide quote

JB wrote:

Yeah, a MIMO router costs less than most of this stuff. What got me
going in the thread was the part about antennas don't work that well, I
didn't want to let that go unanswered.

You might want to see this review of a MIMO router:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Q2F333CAA

Well -- in general -- there have been a lot of problems with antennas not
delivering the range people have expected...

JB wrote:

Then those people's expectations were not realistic. I have nowhere near
the longest link out of the people I know, but I have one link at 4
miles that has been absolutely rock steady for over two years with a
13dbi panel. And that's shooting by, through and over a sh*tload of
other users with wireless routers who sit and whine about why they can't
get good distance. Unless you care to back up your claims that antennas
don't work as well as they're supposed to, then I'd have to assume
you've become an expert in just the last few days. If you'd care to see
some other people's opinions on antennas, look at just about any work
concerning the use of radio signals (the name Marconi ring a bell?).
Hell, take those puny antennas off of your beloved MIMO router and see
what kind of distance you get without them.

On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 21:47:16 -0500, Rôgêr <ab***@your.isp.com> wrote:

Ummm... I wanna see the outside antenna that handles all three MIMO
antennas on a Belkin router.  Maybe 3ea seperate antennas?  That will
look kinda strange.  I don't think that MIMO plus external antennas is
gonna play too well unless the antenna is specifically made for MIMO.

I'm mystified how D-Link can do MIMO with only two antennas on the
DI-624M.
  http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=385
  http://support.dlink.com/Emulators/di624m/h_wireless.html
Under the wireless tab, it give the choice of:
  Super G disabled
  Super G without Turbo
  Super G with Dynamic Turbo
  Super G with Static Turbo
Sigh.  Will the buzzword factory ever end?

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Just to clarify, I didn't mean for him to attach external antennas.
Since antennas don't work well, he could just do without any at all.

"The new external antennas each contain two 2.5-dBi antenna elements
that are a key component for the underlying beam-forming technology."

So, does four elements help you understand better? Doesn't help me. I
tried to read the paper on MIMO technology at:
http://www.columbia.edu/~acc40/MIMO.pdf but they used so many big words
and math it reminded me of you.

Apparently Super G Dynamic Turbo means works in MIMO mode unless some
standards-based radio is connecting. Static Turbo means works in MIMO
mode and no standard radio need apply. I'm going to wait on Fantastic
Super G Static Turbo.

I had a turbo Ford Probe one time that was really fast for a poor man's
sports car. I guess it must have been Dynamic Turbo since it didn't add
much boost until about 1500 RPM, then it'd press you back into the
bucket seat pretty good.

On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 23:39:46 -0500, Rôgêr <ab***@your.isp.com> wrote:

I don't think MIMO or anything else will work without antennas, but
miracles do happen.

Beam forming?  Is that like directional antenna?  I'm lost in the
lingo.

Gee thanks.  I understand the first two sections on diversity
reception having working with HF and cellular diversity systems.
However, I'm lost in the 3rd and 4th sections on MIMO and V-Blast.
Maybe when I'm awake, it will look better.  I'll try the MATLAB model
and see what happens.  I can't even tell what it's suppose to do.

My father once warned me to avoid anything that's named super,
amazing, magic, miracle, etc, as they never live up to their names.
I've added turbo, accelerated, simple, easy, fantastic, and such to
the list.

I drive a 1983 Dodge D50 diesel pickup with a turbocharger and 290K
miles.  I've cranked up the boost pressure to one atmosphere.  Stomp
on the pedal, wait 3 seconds, and then it takes off.  Power peaks at
2200 rpm and drops rapidly on either side of the peak.  My bench seat
now resembles a bucket seat because the springs have collapsed.  I
sink down almost to the floor.  Kinda feels like sitting on a toilet
seat.  No support in the middle.  Ummmm... how did we get on this
topic?

Me! #1 At the top! While I have Crossfire going... The Linksys WRT54G
(super,
amazing, magic, miracle, turbo, accelerated, simple, easy, fantastic)
radio has two antennae connectors. If I hook up one external, what do I
do with the other connector?
1) leave the duck attached, 2) take off the duck, 3) take off the duck
and attach some kind of termination, 4) use a second external, 5)?

It depends on what you're doing.  For a point to point link, the
danger is that the 2nd antenna might pickup interference from a
co-channel radio and distract the radio while it figures out if the
traffic (or trash) is worth decoding.

1.  If your WRT54G is indoors, and your antenna is outdoors, you can
leave the cheezy 2nd antenna in place to allow indoor coverage.
Diversity reception will switch back and forth between the two
antennas and select the best antenna.  Leaving the rubber ducky
antenna in place doesn't hurt anything.

2.  If you're using alternative firmware with the WRT54G and using it
as a transparent bridge link to another WRT54G, with a pair of high
gain antennas, and there's no need for any "local" coverage, then just
unplug the extra antenna.  Officially, you're suppose to terminate the
unused antenna port with a 50 ohm load, but I don't bother.  If the
2nd antenna were present, then local interference on the same channel
will get the attention of the radio and cause it to slow down.  All of
the alternative firmware seem to have an antenna selector setting in
the web based setup, so the extra port can simply be disabled.  Use
one antenna where you're trying to protect your link from co-channel
users.

3.  Some radios have problems playing repeater going in one antenna
and out the other.  When I first tested this about 3 years ago, this
arrangement resulted in about a huge loss in thruput.  I just retested
this arrangement with a WRT54Gv1.1 and Satori firmware and found no
degradation at all.  So, kindly ignore my previous pontifications on
not using two antennas to play store-n-forward repeater or WDS bridge.

Incidentally, if you look carefully at the board layout of most
internal PCI slot cards, you'll notice that it's really an enlarged
mini-PCI card with a bigger circuit board.  The 2nd antenna port is
usually terminated with a 50 ohm chip resistor.

Now for the ultimate question, that boggles the minds of all that
practice the art of wireless.  The software settings for selecting
antennas is labeled "left" and "right" antennas.  Is that looking at
the back of the radio or at the front? 
(Spoiler:  It's the back, but I still can't believe Linksys did that).

I'm pretty sure Jeff is going to need more statistics for your findings
(ba-bum-bum).

But, that Probe -- it also has a bad rap in the market. Maybe people had too
high of expectations. Yeah, that's it -- it's the consumers fault, of
course!

I think you are missing the point. If you say that their expectations are
all too high and the anntennas shouldn't work that well, that's one thing.
If you are saying they had high expectatiosn and the antennas worked
extremely well, but not that great, then that would be a different point.
So, which is it? Because no amount of blathering will change the fact that
high-gain antennas have a bad rap in the marketplace.

JB wrote:
I didn't say either of those statements, those are your words.

You seem to have been exposed to a lot of bad rappers. First antennas
and now the Probe too. That's okay, I don't care for rapping anyway.
Generally, I'd say that most antennas I've been exposed to behave pretty
much as advertised. It's the consumer level stuff that is likely to be
victim to "It's the latest, greatest, fastest, mostest fantastical thing
you'll ever buy and it only costs $9" marketing. And the consumers are
victims too of course. But if you'll look at the specs on most decent
quality antennas, they don't say it's good for 2 miles or 10 feet, it'll
say it provides x-amount of gain in measurable amounts at a certain
frequency. The rest of the equation is up to you, which includes but is
not limited to the radio's power, sensitivity, ability to distinguish
between good signal and noise, signal attenuation due to cables and
connectors, interference, obstructions, weather, quality of
installation, on and on.

Believe me, if there were a simple solution such as just buying a MIMO
device and overcome all those obstacles, I'd try to be first in line to
buy MIMO. I have no qualms with someone getting MIMO to better cover
their home or office, but to make a blanket statement that antennas
don't work like they should is no better than the hype in the other
direction.

The money is right. I will order from them. BTW, the Rootenna looks
interesting since it allows placement of the router right with it,
cutting the coax loss as you explained. Just Cat5e to the outside box.
Comment?

Lee Hickok wrote:
I understand they are excellent, not done one myself yet. Most of the
devices I use come already made that way. With the Rootenna gotta rig
power over ethernet to the box or figure out a different way of powering
the radio, not a big deal but takes a little learning. But as you say,
no signal loss. You could easily go a LOT farther than a couple hundred
feet with that kind of setup. Good project to learn on, but if you just
want to get the present job done, I'd probably go with the little panel
antenna in each window, keep them indoors.

Thanks.

Ok what MIMO ?

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