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Can you help me roughly CALCULATE how to increase the range of my home
Internet wireless WiFi setup to a shed 300 feet away from my house? Presently, I can walk about half the way through the wooded area to the shed with my laptop in hand before I lose the connection to the PCMCIA 802.11b,g Linksys card. Basically I need to gain 150 feet in "range". But how? At the store, I immediately become confused as I try to compare $30 USD omnidirectional antennas (D-Link ANT24-070) that boost "power" by a claimed 7 db; $50 USD directional corner antennas (Hawking HAI15SC) that claim 15 dbi (whatever a dBi is); and $150 USD 802.11N routers that claim to boost omnidirectional "range" by 4x (Linksys WRT300N). How does an omnidirectional 7 db or directional 15 dBi boost in "power" equate to range? Approximately how many decibels of (omnidirectional or directional) power do I really need to boost my WiFi range from about 150 feet to the 300 feet I need? Looking up what a decibel is (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decibel#Definition), I calculate the D-Link ANT24-070 omnidirectional antenna gives me about 5 times the power (assuming 7 db = 10^7/10 ~= 5); but does this get me the additional 150 feet of range to my shed? Spending almost twice as much money on the Hawking HAI15SC directional antenna gets me roughly 30 times the power (assuming 15 db = 10^15/10 ~= 32); but is that enough power to get me the range to my shed? Indeed, is there some way to add a Hawking 15db antenna on the receiving end to get 1,000 times the power (15 db + 15 db = 30 db = 10^30/10 ~= 1,000); but what would I hook the wire output from this receiving antenna to in the shed (I can't hook it to the pcmcia card, can I)? Given those db calculations, how do I compare the antenna options with replacing my home 802.11b,g router with the 4X range $150 USD Linksys 802.11n WRT300N router and the required $120 USD Linksys WPC300N PCMCIA card (assuming 6 db = 10^6/10)?Will this three-antenna 802.11n router be forced to drop down to 1X speeds because inside my house my kid's laptops will all be using 802.11b or 802.11g? Or can the router work on both 802.11g to one computer and on 802.11n to the other computer at the same time? I'm so confused! All I want is to make a well-informed buying decision to increase my WiFi range reliably to 300 feet to a known point. Can you help me sort out all these very confusing variable (to me anyway)? I have no training in electrical engineering; but I can google. Thank you, Beverly |
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