Friends have just bought a holiday caravan on a site that does not have its own hotspot. They don't want to get a BT line but have been told that the adjacent site has a public wifi point. Would an external usb aerial be the answer? I think the distance is 150 yards over flat ground. There are lots of fancy claims made by vendors, can anyone suggest something that is known to work?
Yes, there are parabolic Wi-Fi antennas that work very well. Here's what I was able to find available in the UK:
24dBi Parabolic Wireless Networking Directional Antenna.
U.S.:
WiFi Antenna | 2.4Ghz Grid Antenna | Parabolic Antenna | L-com.com
The parabolic will certainly work best, but I was hoping for something a little smaller but with some directional capabilities.
I think those parabolics are for narrow beam link ups ie 2 devices looking at each other over a distance, as opposed to just one device trying to pick up a distant signal. The website says 'perfect for point to point'.
Google 'inverse square law' - signal is proportional to the inverse square of the distance. 10 times the distance = 1/100th of the signal etc. If its gonna work, then the bigger the dish the better. Does the next door hotspot have a password ?
I live in a built up area and before I ditched wifi for hard wiring, I could pick up about six signals upto 70 yards away with an aerial about 3 inches long. Problems with reliability led me to the wired route. I don't have any idea if a password is used.
Will this be better? It's certainly less obvious: MFJ-1800 2.4 GHz WiFi 15dBi Yagi Antenna for 802.11b/802.11g Wir - Radioworld
Here's one that's very affordable: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Long-Range...93349919&rt=nc
All these aerials are good but they won't connect to a laptop.
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