Wireless Network Advice Needed - booster vs. expander

[jeanna143]

I'm in a new home and my 2.4 GHz D-Link Wireless Router (DI-614+) in the office does not provide enough signal strength to connect to the network from other area's of the house. Even rooms that are only @ 50 feet away.

I was doing some research on different products available but being a novice in networking, I'm just not sure which is best for me.

I saw three products that seem like they could help. The Lynksys Wireless-G Range Expander, the Hawking Technologies Wireless Signal Booster, and the Super Cantenna Wireless Booster Antenna.

The first two seem like they might be fairly easy to setup but I'm not clear what one offers over the other. The last one seems like a rather large piece of equipment... I don't know... something about having a big silver tube behind my head makes me a bit nervous.

Please feel free to offer me any suggestions or any comments on those listed above... I'm open.

Thank you!!
Jeanna

 

[beridor]

not knowing these exact devices I can offer a guess as to what they do:-

The range extender will act as a repeater - it recieves the signal from your ap in the same way as a client, it then regenerates the signal and re-transmits it. This should mean that your range has been doubled, one thing to note is that each frame you transmit will be picked up by the repeater (if you are associated to the repeater) and re-transmitted to the ap in a busy network this can severley degrade performance (almost half it).

in terms of a signal booster, this will sit between the ap an the antenna and will increase the signal that is sent to the antenna, the antenna will then add it's gain further boosting the signal so the system will shout louder and the signal travel further.

I believe that the wireless booster antenna will provide a similar function, once again shouting the signal louder.

these last two methods need to be treated cautiously as they could lead to you exceeding the allowed ERIP and to breaking the law. just make sure that you keep the power to below 100mW.

dave

 

[Frank4d]

The Cantenna is highly directional, so it would work well with a single PC with the antenna aimed toward the router or access point.

It probably would not provide whole house coverage if connected instead to the router or access point.