Antenna?

[MasterBash]

Hi!

I am wondering what would be the best omni-directional antenna for the RT-N66U. The reason I ask this is because I live in a dorm with concrete walls, so I do not get any signal in the "living room" from my room, but it is quite close though, I do get a weak signal around 3 meters away from there, so maybe I can find a strong enough antenna (whether its made for indoor or outdoor I guess it doesn't matter, as long as it doesn't take a huge amount of space).

I am asking for omni-directional because during the summer when I am home, I need the signal to be sent to every room in the house. If someone has any advice for a good directional antenna, I will keep that in mind. I guess I could buy 3 of them and position them so every room has a signal. (I have no problem getting any signal anywhere in the house, so I suppose it could be fine if its directional).

Thank you.

 

[linkmaster]

Would a wifi repeater be of more use?

 

[MasterBash]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

A repeater could be useful, but it would still be relatively close to my router... As in, my room is quite small (~3 meters of open space). Though it can help a bit, I don't think I will be able to get a signal unless it has more range than the RT-N66u.

 

[BigIronPops]

Hi!

I am wondering what would be the best omni-directional antenna for the RT-N66U. The reason I ask this is because I live in a dorm with concrete walls, so I do not get any signal in the "living room" from my room, but it is quite close though, I do get a weak signal around 3 meters away from there, so maybe I can find a strong enough antenna (whether its made for indoor or outdoor I guess it doesn't matter, as long as it doesn't take a huge amount of space).

I am asking for omni-directional because during the summer when I am home, I need the signal to be sent to every room in the house. If someone has any advice for a good directional antenna, I will keep that in mind. I guess I could buy 3 of them and position them so every room has a signal. (I have no problem getting any signal anywhere in the house, so I suppose it could be fine if its directional).

Thank you.

See this post, http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?p=64242#post64242. I made two of these for my WRT54GL long ago and they worked great. It's cheap (nearly free), removable and above all it works!.

 

[RogerSC]

There are a couple other possibilities...how about an access point for wireless (AP) in your living room? If you could run a cable to an access point on the other side of your bedroom wall from your router, or even through the wall, if you could subtly drill a smallish hole at the base of the wall through the wall.

I'm not sure about powerline networking in a dorm room, but that might work as well. There you would get a couple of powerline network adapters, one where the router plugs in, and one where the AP plugs in, and the powerlines are used to carry the ethernet signals. You might try that as well.

Just a couple of thoughts...On the antenna front, not sure if that's going to work for you. Generally speaking, antennas that provide gain are not omnidirectional, that's how they provide gain, by sending more of the signal in a particular desired direction than the rest (sometimes called "signal lobes"). I like the idea of playing with homemade antennas to check out what you can do with antennas before buying any *smile*.

 

[MasterBash]

Thanks for the link, I will definitely try it out.

Unfortunately, I can't drill anything here. I can't run a long cable because I don't trust some people, as they enjoy to do bad things so I don't know what they are gonna do with the cable... or even trip over it, lol.