I get the internet from the university. The problem is that there is no network in my room. The only place where I can use the internet is the garden. And since it's like 15 meters away from my room. Right now I have 3 cables TL-ANT24EC5S which are described as 'low-loss', they seem to work well.
I have 2 antennas:
- TP-Link TL-ANT2405C 2.4GHz 5dbi Indoor Omni-Directional Antenna
- 25dBi 2.4GHz 802.11b/g Wifi Yagi Antenna RP-SMA
The TP-Link antenna sees many networks including the one I want to use, but the signal is weak and I believe it's the reason why I can't connect to it.
The other antenna is an ebay-china-£7 antenna. Even though it is directional and states to have 25dBi, it sees less networks and shows weaker signal - no matter where I point it.
My questions:
1. Is it possible that my network-card in the desktop pc makes some problems? Or as long as the sockets are right it doesn't really matter?
2. What antenna shall I get to make that work? What wifi antennas are used in netbooks/laptops? Could I get a similar technology?
ps. Each laptop/netbook is able to connect to the network in the garden,
I would first try to grab an amplifier for your antenna. You can put a big antenna on your computer, but if your wireless card is under powered to begin with, it won't make much of a difference.
You can try this if you wish to keep your current wireless card (prices are pretty decent on eBay):
If you have a window that faces the general direction of where the WiFi is being transmitted from, you could use this antenna in conjunction with either of the items I listed above.
As for using the china-made omni-directional antennas, I would avoid them. I've tried them out myself, and performance with them is rather disappointing. A good rule of thumb is to stick with name brand antennas. They might be more expensive, but they offer the performance they claim (most of the time).
Ubiquiti AirGrid "dish" form factor grid antenna. It's single polarity so you can tilt it to get best signal from AP and best rejection from other APs. Plug it into you laptop's LAN port or another low power wireless router in your room.
We are wifi antenna factory in China, as i known, yagi wifi antenna cannot reach such 25dBi high , in China, most of factory they can do wifi yagi antenna in 18dBi at most.
And, i think you must to use the higher power wireless lan card to match the high gain yagi antenna.
Last edited by www.tesswave.com; 07-18-2012 at 03:15 AM..
Thank you all for the repiles. I was in rush so unfortunately I did not manage to read your posts on time - but hopefully they will be of help to others.
Tesswave, ebay does not agree with you
( I cannot post links, so look for yagi antenna )
At the end I used this antenna:
TP-Link TL-ANT2408C 2.4GHz 8dbi Indoor Omni-Directional Desktop Antenna
with good results. I made a 15 meter long cable from that:
TP-Link TL-ANT24EC5S Low-Loss Antenna Extension Cable
Moving a wifi antenna outdoor 
Linear Mode
