Migrating from 6dbi to 18dbi antenna, can't see the difference

Hei there!

This is my first posting here...

I live in Oslo, Norway and I'm having a rather curious problem. Me and my girlfriend live across the street from each other. Her building is a bit over 50 meters from each other, and our windows face each other (she lives on the 2nd floor and I on the 5th). We have been sharing a internet connection for 6 months now. I have the router and she a 6dbi antenna. With all that setup, she gets anything from 20% to 30% signal from my router, depending on the weather (I assume...).

Last week we bought another antenna, with 18dbi. The manufacturer (D-Link) claims it should cover 4000m with 54kbps, more than 10 times what the other antenna (6dbi) claims to cover. What I had wanted was to get somewhere close to even 100%, as the new antenna is so much more powerful.

The point is - the connection has not improved at all. Even though it is not the point here (because we share a secure connection), I don't seem to "catch" any more wireless signals than I usually did anyway...

So I wonder what it is I should do to improve it. Should I buy a newer network card or should I give up on my idea as it won't improve anyway?

Cheers,
Wallace

hey innerflash,

I see that you live on the 5th floor of the building and your girlfriend lives on the 2nd floor of the opposite building, so that might be the issue here - check to see if your antennae is omnidirectional or uni/bidirectional. Omnidirectional usually sends out majority of the signal in one horizontal plane (ie same floor). So might be that your girlfriend is only picking up the minority of the signal....

If it's possible (might have to buy new antennae? third one?) you could use a unidirectional antennae (would be a flat rectangle rather than a pole) and angle it so it points towards your girlfriend's window . . .

Another issue maybe that you just have lots of interference in the space between your flats - this isn't something you can do much about unfortunately, as it is radiowaves/etc from the rest of the town.

Another idea is that you could buy one of those outdoor antennae, which are suppose to cover km's - but you said that your new one is supposed to cover 4km . . . .

PM me if you manage to fix this, as I'm intrested in what was the problem

regards
Nathan