"Glenn Ashmore" wrote in
:

That setup sounds very clean but what do you do about power? The
WRT54GS comes standard at 63mw and if you boost it over 100mw it will
over heat.

The 200mw out of my little EUB-362 in my traveling set up makes a
major difference in usable range.


I used to think that mattered. It doesn't because the hotspot you're
connecting to ISN'T running 200mw, probably closer to 50. If I'm running a
kilowatt and you're running a watt, you can always hear me, but I can only
hear you so far. Overkill doesn't seem to fix it....2400 Mhz is line of
sight at any power level less than 1KW where tropospheric ducting will take
it over the horizon:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/TRC-97A_Radio
That won't do you any good unless the marina wifi uses one, too...(c;

Larry
--
Democracy is when two wolves and a sheep vote on who's for dinner.
Liberty is when the sheep has his own gun.

It may be true that most US marina hot spots run under 65mw but most of the
commercial services (and a few altruistic souls) with APs aimed at
anchorages in the Caribbean run 200mw or more.

--
Glenn Ashmore

I'm building a 45' cutter in strip/composite. Watch my progress (or lack
there of) at: http://www.rutuonline.com
Shameless Commercial Division: http://www.spade-anchor-us.com

"Larry" wrote in message
...
"Glenn Ashmore" wrote in
:

That setup sounds very clean but what do you do about power? The
WRT54GS comes standard at 63mw and if you boost it over 100mw it will
over heat.

The 200mw out of my little EUB-362 in my traveling set up makes a
major difference in usable range.


I used to think that mattered. It doesn't because the hotspot you're
connecting to ISN'T running 200mw, probably closer to 50. If I'm running
a
kilowatt and you're running a watt, you can always hear me, but I can only
hear you so far. Overkill doesn't seem to fix it....2400 Mhz is line of
sight at any power level less than 1KW where tropospheric ducting will
take
it over the horizon:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/TRC-97A_Radio
That won't do you any good unless the marina wifi uses one, too...(c;

Larry
--
Democracy is when two wolves and a sheep vote on who's for dinner.
Liberty is when the sheep has his own gun.

OK, so now we are being told the new box we have ordered will not work with the Linksys WRT54GS router we already have.

I'm begining to think this person we are dealing with has never really done this before.

We have the outdoor/marine WiFi antenna and the Linksys box. So, what else do we need? Please list brand/s and model number/s.

Can we make the Linksys box work with a firmware update/change?

Or should we just start over with different boxes?

And please feel free to spell things out like I'm an idiot. Cause while I'm up on most all marine electronics, WiFi set ups are still new to me.

Thanks.

OK, so now we are being told the new box we have ordered will not work
with the Linksys WRT54GS router we already have.

What 'new box'?

It's pretty simple, you need two radios. One to make the link to shore and
the other to provide an on-boat wireless network. I've had success using a
pair of WRT54GS routers to do this. I've loaded the dd-wrt firmware on
them. It works quite well. There are any number of other ways you could
configure it. But given the low cost and wide availabiilty of dd-wrt
compatible routers, well, why bother?

That setup sounds very clean but what do you do about power? The WRT54GS
comes standard at 63mw and if you boost it over 100mw it will over heat.

As I said, in testing I've found it's completely uncessary to use higher
power settings. When using an omnidirectional antenna and higher power
settings you end up picking up MORE signals than you want. This actually
degrades performance. Now, if you were in an area with only 1 or 2 shore
networks then it might be worth using higher settings.

As for overheating, I've cranked my WRT54GSv4 to 200mw and it worked just
fine. This was for an anchorage in St.Mary's that had only one SSID showing
up. Raising the power to 150mw got me the signal needed. Otherwise I
usually leave it at the factory settings (or close to it). I've never had
an overheating problem.

The 200mw out of my little EUB-362 in my traveling set up makes a major
difference in usable range.

All I can say is my experience dictates otherwise.

-Bill Kearney

What part of "talk to me like an idiot" did you not get Bill? :-)

The other box was/is a receiver box. But it apparently will not work with the Linksys we now have. Or so we have been told.

What is a dd-wrt router?

I'm assuming it both receives and broad casts WiFi?

And do you recomment an particular brand over an others?

Have the model number for a Linksys or other dd-wrt handy?

I called Linksys support and very carefully explained to them what I was trying to do but they tried to tell me it could not be done. Of course me not speaking Hindi may have been the problem.

Thanks.

I have an OT question regarding a Linksys WGA54G.
Bill, I wondered if you know what the 0-100% signal strength gage in the
above game adapter means in dBm received? I am using the adapter to
access my neighbor's WiFi network and see 20% signal at some 300' range.
Thank you,
Dick

Or, how about this as a simpler solution.

We have a marine wifi antenna and a Hawking HSB1 signal amp. So if I get the right adapter and hook the marine antenna to the incoming side of the Hawking amp, that should pull the wifi signal into the boat and boost it in the boat via the Hawking. Correct?

At least that seem to be what a lot of the "marine" wifi kits are made up of.

I called Linksys support and very carefully explained to them what I
was trying to do but they tried to tell me it could not be done. Of
course me not speaking Hindi may have been the problem.

Visit the http://www.dd-wrt.com website. It has what's called a 3rd party
firmware for the WRT54 series of routers. When using that you can
reconfigure the router to act as a client. That's what I've done on my
boat. I have no other amplifiers; they generally don't work anyway (at
least no better than with proper antennae setup)

Yes, the linksys people are dumb as a bag of hammers. Of course they don't
know jack about dd-wrt. They make a cheap box, buy it and RUN from their
support. If it breaks, well, it was cheap anyway. That's why I laid in a
couple of spares.

If you're not prepared to learn the geek aspects of this you might just be
better off buying one of the packaged marine wifi setups. I've never used
one so I have no opinions regarding how well they work or not.

-Bill Kearney

I have an OT question regarding a Linksys WGA54G.
Bill, I wondered if you know what the 0-100% signal strength gage in the
above game adapter means in dBm received? I am using the adapter to
access my neighbor's WiFi network and see 20% signal at some 300' range.

How should I know? I don't have the game adapter. But 300' using the
factory antenna is big distance.