Jim wrote:
Firstly sorry if this is OT guys but you do seem the best people to ask.

The part of London I live in has rubbish ISP speeds (4 mbit) and I have
been offered an old Relish.net router which is a Gemtek WLTFSR-115GN, I
know some of these have external aerial sockets (US ones I think) but
the version I will get does not have any external sockets, so it's a
case of go inside and try to figure out some way of connecting an
external aerial, now the reason I need an external one is I am right on
the edge of their coverage and only get a single bar using just the
router, I do have some images of the inside of the router so I will post
the links for them later, but I was just wondering if anyone has heard
of this being done in the UK?


I did the same for a friend using a Huawei E169 USB dongle with an external
antenna socket. She lived in a basement and had no signal on her cell
phone.

The best results we go was with "15dBi GSM/3G/UMTS panel antenna with
extension cable 5m + RP-SMA female to CRC9" from eBay, for about $50
including postage.

You can buy LTE (4G) dongles from eBay with external antenna sockets.

Just make sure they support the bands used in London, the antenna
matches the bands, and the connector on the cable matches the dongle.

This does require a computer to be used as a router, or a MiFi which
has a USB socket for you to provide your own dongle.

The other (probably cheaper) option is to find a cheap smartphone with an
antenna socket and use wifi tethering. Or if it is just a problem with your
home and holding the phone up to the window works, get a roll of duct tape.
:-)

Geoff.

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Geoffrey S. Mendelson, N3OWJ/4X1GM/KBUH7245/KBUW5379