[ILUG-BOM] Increasing the Range of a Wi-Fi LAN 802.11b

[jtd]

On Friday 16 April 2004 10:16, Abhishek Daga wrote:
> Dear Linux (thus making this post eligible for posting here :))
> users.
>
> Here is an interesting problem.
>
>
> Introduction:
> Lets just say Person A has an X company's broadband (512kbps)
> installed and working already.
> Person B, who lives opposite to person A would like to share that
You basically want to link two points using 802.11b. Oldhat boring 
stuff to anyone who has used radios.
what is the distance?. are you seperated by a road or buildings.

It is quite simple, but a pain as you have to build all the pieces.
From the acess point antenna o/p connect a splitter. You will have to 
make this using a toroid core and trifilliar wound coil. Put simply 
three pieces of insulated wire bunched together and looped a few 
times around the core. Search the web for a design, umpteen available 
This has three connections 1 input 2 outputs. Input goes to the 
access point. One end of splitter goes to your existing whip antenna 
(omnidirectional) for access in region around access point. The 2nd 
o/p connect to external directional antenna (pringle, yagi, patch, 
spiral or any of the umpteen designs available on the web) with rj175 
cable and stick it outside window/door/terrace. Ideally the reciver & 
transmitter points should be in line of sight, but you can get around 
a corner by bouncing of a tall building. Your friend should connect 
his wifi card ant o/p to another piece of rj175 and connect to 
another directional antenna. Fire up the power, run squid on your 
512kbps terminated m/c, align ur antennas and u r rdy ro go.
Since the wifi cards have only a few mw of power bouncing will be a 
problem. Adding a splitter will half the range of the access point 
and slow it down, less power=more noise=low bw.

Total cost would be about Rs.1200/- most of it is cable and 
connectors.