signal levels

Hello Forum,

I am a newbie to this forum and to wireless connections. My problem is that I just got a new panel 14dbi ant. I have permission to access my neighbors signal to connect to Internet. The signal level from that is about 30% and it connects intermittantly. Sometime it does but mostly does not! The signal level stays at 30%. It is an open signal not encrypted.
Thanks for any help on this problem.

How far is your neighbors home? Even if you are seeing the signal, and it appears to be strong enough, it may not be. If you are connecting some of the time, there might be to many obstacles the signal is having to go through. The receive sensitivity is probably to low also. Try moving the antenna to another room, preferably closer to you. If there is a power output setting on the router, try that. If you are using a laptop, they tend to not be as consistent with wireless links, just for the fact the run off batteries. Try setting the laptop, so that it uses max power on the wireless card when on batteries. This may also help when it is plugged in. Hope this helps.