Yesterday I had to quickly choose which of three antennas to put on a
router being used as a client at a distant site (400 meters) that has
marginal reception.

I had asked the people to pick up some 7 dbi omnis before they left
the country (we are in the boonies in Mexico). But they didn't.
"Maybe next time, but could you please get our laptop online now ?"

So, while setting up the router (WRT54G with DD-WRT) at my house,
which is much closer, I brought up the setup pages for DD-WRT for the
client router and for the base station router (Buffalo HP on dd-wrt)

As I watched the signal level on both routers (seperated by about 150
meters), I swapped antennas to see which yeilded the high readings in
DD-WRT. Speed was fixed at 12 Mbps.

Results given in Signal strength, but sig/noise ratio corresponded.
Results wavered by 2 %.

1) Linksys WRT54G stock antenna: 50% on client end, 58% at AP
2) Buffalo WHR-HP-54G stock antenna (supposedly high gain) with sma to
tnc adapter: 48% on client end 58% at AP

3) Belkin "9dbi" panel antenna with 4' of LMR 100 and sma to tnc
adapter: 48% on client end and 58% at AP

4) Linksys stock antenna with "EZ-10" reflector: 58% on client end and
65% at the AP.

I was surprised. I thought that the 9dbi panel would outperform the
others. Of course I did pick it up for $5 as a discontinued item.
Maybe that's why.
Next I thought that the Buffalo antenna would show better than the
linksys.

The reflector was no surprise. They really do help. At the site, the
reflector added about 4 dbi to the S/N ratio but that got it up to 20,
as shown in DD-WRT. I used it with the original linksys antenna since
it seemed as good as the other two I had.


Question: I understand that doing a walk test at fixed connection
speed is best, but still, is this approach totally worthless or is it
reasonable for me to make comparisons in this manner?

Steve