
I think what you're looking at with the dual antenna mounts is a 
diversity antenna.  It won't work too well with one hooked up to the 
pringles can and the other hooked up to a regular rubber duck.-Ian.
On Tuesday, October 1, 2002, at 01:04 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote:>
> 1) reinforced concrete shields like the dickens; wood lots less so
> 2) line of sight is best (o'really?)
> 3) if you want to boost range, use directional aerials, not omnis
>
> Direct line of sight (no trees, no nothing) can give you ~10 km with 
> well
> aligned directional aerials (and, say, no sleet, no locusts, nor rain 
> of
> blood). If you want to fan out afterwards, use a bridge of a 
> directional
> coupling to an omni. 802.11a should shield within building lots more 
> than
> 802.11b, ditto line of sight with lots of precipitation inbetween.
>
> On Tue, 1 Oct 2002, Damien Morton wrote:
>
>> I just bought a LinkSys BEFW1154v2 Access Point Router for $150
>> (http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=22&prid=415). Im 
>> doing
>> some dev work on a Symbol PocketPC device with built in 802.11b.
>>
>> In this 600 sq ft pre-war New York apartment it goes through 2 or 3
>> walls, into the hallway and halfway down the first flight of stairs
>> before it loses contact with the base station. That's less than 50 ft.
>> Inside the apartment, it works just fine.
>>
>> I just did some further testing - through 2 brick walls the range is
>> about 25 feet. The signal also goes through the roof pretty much
>> unimpeded.
>>
>> That said, the Symbol device doesn't have an antenna to speak of, and 
>> I
>> havent done any tweaking to try to extend the range.
>>
>> The Linksys unit has two antenna mounts - you could leave one as an 
>> omni
>> antenna while hooking up a directional antenna to the other.
>>
>> You might find that you have to use several access points and/or
>> repeaters to get the coverage you want.
