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RE: Airport range (extending the range)

CrackedButter

CrackedButter

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jan 15, 2003
3,221
0
51st State of America
Has anybody extended the range of their AE base station? If so, what was the optimal/max/best range gain and transfer speed. I live close to college (real close) and it doesn't have a wireless network but i'm thinking i could buy a AE base station and get it extended so it might reach my college library where i could chill and do work.

My friend lives even less a distance and i am very hopeful it will reach his house as well for Network games but thats just a bonus.

Does anybody think it will work with regard to interference? I live in the attic of my house anyway and college is a straight line down the road.
 
i'm pretty sure u won't be able to make it to your college's university. My airport almost doesn't make it through my whole house...
 
well how far is it? more than say a hundred feet? because thats about all you're going to get.

Maybe if you got a different base station, with an antenna?
 
You can get a directional antenna that attaches to the base station and point it towards campus. I believe some signal boosters are also available. Whether it will be enough to reach or not is another matter. It might be easier if you could have a base station at your friends house.
 
Yeah i'm only 5,7 in height, i'm not a midget or a basketball player.. average but i didn't want to put a figure to it but i was thinking as an estimation about 1000 feet, give or take a 100.
 
hmmmm, don't they make repeaters or something? The longest range I have heard of is about 300ft and that's advertised distance.
 
@ Schiffi,Since you never respond to PM's, i just thought i would tell you i have ordered a 15PB WITH Superdrive now on ADC discount.

@ the topic, anyway, if you cannot get a signal that far then forget it then, maybe to my friends house instead.
 
There are outdoor wireless base stations. Maybe you could mount one of those on some building halfway to the library. that would be awesome.
 
Yeah i am sure it would turn a few heads as i'm surfing the net with no wires...some people here are not clued up on this sort of stuff so it would amaze them. Wireless hasn't got this kind of exposure apart from the mac heads in the technical offices at the college.
 
Is your friends house in between you and the school? That could help.




I know at my school, since i've been there, we've had wireless internet coverage in every building, and outdoors as well.
 
I once bought a pair of antennae from Fab-Corp to experiment with back home. A 13 dBi omni works wonders with a cheap Linksys WAP. Using both antennae and my former iBook, I easily got a 2 mile line of sight link to work. However, without putting an external antenna on your laptop, signal attenuation is pretty likely to kill any hope of data making its way back to the WAP.

Unless you plan on somehow obtaining some sort of phased array access point, the airport card and stock antenna will lack the power to do anything long range.
 
No say if my house is down the road to college is is off to the left somewhat down another street, hardly any closer.

Wow to last post and i've bookmarked it thanks.
 
I walked past my college today on the way to work and it isn't 1000 feet it is actually just shy of 330 feet, thats including the distance to get inside the library.

I suppose this helps somewhat?

Thanks for the links.
 
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