I'm gonna be moving furniture around in my house which means my computer along with my wireless router is going to be moved upstairs.

My current netgear router only has a 2db antenna and it's not that that strong.

Rather than spending the $80 bucks and get another access point to extend the range I was thinking about buying a higher gain antenna for $30 which will do the trick.

My question is have any of you guys had any good or bad experiences with the following antenna:

Hi-Gain 6dBi Omni-Directional Wireless Antenna

I know there are issues with antenna's and the way they point, and wifi connectivity in mutli story buildings. But currently my bro's computer which is upstairs is connecting ok with my router downstairs. But I don't want it to be just 'ok' I want it to have a much better connection because it will have to go through multiple walls to get the signal.

And the reason why i'm moving the router along with my computer is because my linux server doesn't have a wireless pc card installed in it. And i'm not gonna bother installing one either because I need to keep a fast connection with it and the network and I only have a 802.11b network which is fine for the pc's.

 

Well try it first... I have a netgear WG602 AP connected to my wired LAN switch upstairs, and I've got no problems talking to the PCs downstairs. The WG602 has a 2dBi antenna, too. Heck, I'm downstairs right now.

FWIW, using the Netgear Smart Configuration software, I couldn't get the communications going between floors. It would tell me the signal was 80% and too weak. It actually liked the signal from my neighbor better! And that was in the high 70%'s! It made no sense.
I got rid of that POS software and used the built-in XP wireless connection thing and I'm getting excellent reception downstairs, and very reliable throughput.

 

funny thing, i bought a wg602 3 weeks ago from fry's, tried to configure it and hook it up upstairs as a repeater and it didn't work. it couldn't find my wireless router no matter what I did. So I returned it.

THis is another reason why I don't want to worry about adding another Access point because then I have to configure another peice of hardware, and I'm big on securing my network and so if I ever had to change anything I gotta change it in two places.

With the higher gain antenna, i simply extend my range and voila! done!

Yea I think i'm gonna give it a try and see how it goes.

 

Linksys range expander >* Those things work great...

 

How do these extenders work? Right now I get my internet from my downstairs neighbor's wirless router. I only get about 35% siganl, but that is fine for what I need it for. I have some problems sometimes but hey it's free. Yes my neighbor knows & gave me permission.
Would the expander have to plug into his router? Or can I setup it up at my place & it will boost the signal to my wireless card? How does it know which wireless connection to expand?

 

You have to program in the wireless networks info into the expander so it knows what networks TO expand.

so basically you'll have to set it up for your ssid, wep security, MAC address filtering, any of those things that it supports so that it properly AND securely extends your network.