[mcbee]

I have a situation where I set up a wireless link from office to house and the signal is poor. Does anyone have any experience with the inexpensive booster aerials? do they work?

[Dave Hybrid]

Personally I would buy a router that puts out a stronger signal rather than getting a booster.

There are 4 levels of wireless router.

G
G+
G+ Mimo
G+ N Mimo

G is only really good for same room.
G+ Is for next room/upstairs.

The last two are much more powerful, with a G+ N Mimo router you should have no problem getting the signal down the road. :)

What one do you have?

[mcbee]

It's just G. It came with the BT broadband.

[Dave Hybrid]

It's **** then, you will be lucky to get a signal in the next room depending how thick your walls are.

I'd upgrade it mate, for the price of a booster you can get a better router which is a much cleaner, more reliable way of doing things.

Let me know if you need me to suggest something.

[mcbee]

It's not as bad as that. It actually works ok although it is only getting a half strength signal. This is over a distance of 150 feet. What I was wondering was would a stronger aerial than the stock item on both router and card make any difference?

[Dave Hybrid]

Not really, the signal is only as good as the router.

With G at half signal your getting around 25mbps.

With G+ N Mimo on full you will get 300Mbps.

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProdu...duct_Id=299342

Belkin explain it better.

[mr_miller]

you could get a cheapo router and set it up as bridge, or one of those apple airport things, but you may need to 'upgrade' your routers bios with a custom one that supports wds

[Dave Hybrid]

Originally Posted by mr_miller you could get a cheapo router and set it up as bridge, or one of those apple airport things, but you may need to 'upgrade' your routers bios with a custom one that supports wds

I just don't see the point when you can upgrade the router for the same price and get faster speeds on top.

[mr_miller]

true, in my experience a bad connection is a bad connection no matter what hardware you throw at it. I rather have a decent 54mbps connection than a poorer 300mbps, plus to get those speeds you'll need to upgrade the wireless cards/adapters too. I've only played with the netgear rangemax/mimo stuff and wasn't that impressed in a setup similar to the one described. I'd take the punt on an aerial or signal repeater method.

[Dave Hybrid]

Sorry but that's total rubbish.

That's like saying if your engine blows up in your car that it will always be like it even if you change the engine.

G is 3-4 years old technology.

G+ N Mimo is newer, more powerful for better range and it's faster.

They couldn't sell it if it wasn't, you can't just pump out the same technology under a new name.

I have set up the belkin stuff countless times for customers and its worked like a dream when their G tech didn't.