ellisbodds said:
alpha90 said:
@ellisbodds
Any of those 3 solutions could work, but the 2 involving extension cables probably give you the best shot of transcending the shielding of the alcove.
Yeah, that sounds right. Do you think that one of the 9DBi antennae with an extension cable would be enough? I don't know much about what DBi means myself, but from what I've seen the stock ones are about 2DBi each, so that would be over double the stock DBi and also in a far better place.
Thanks
Since you achieved successful wifi using the stock antennae simply by temporarily moving the CustoMac from the signal blockage of its home within the alcove, a single 9 dBi antenna "should" do the job, particularly if you allow it to be placed as high in the room as acceptable. My slight hesitancy is that you'll have just a single, rather than the dual antennae as on the adapter now. But in your favor:
-AirPort cards, whether in MacBooks or MacPro's, use just a single antenna, and it is internal, blocked by the PC's case. (Obviously Apple does a good job of engineering & tuning their AirPort antennae.)
-9 dBi is a lot of gain! This assumes the vendor is rating it properly, which often is not the case, but even if half-true, the standard antennae is theoretically rated as zero; so getting even 4dBi gain should be huge.
So I'd say buy & try, and if a single is only partially successful, buy another when you can afford. But still recognize that (although I doubt it) a #2 antenna may add nothing of advantage, and you won't prove it until too late.
In the meantime, you could leave one of the original antennae still connected, assuring you choose the jack that links to the wifi card, and not the #3 jack which goes no place (if you have a 3-antenna adapter to 2-antenna wifi card as I do).
How many antennae does your router have?
