The only problem is that with these powerful antennas not only you can easily cross legal allowed limit for wifi spectrum (which is much lower in Europe and quite generous in australia/usa) but if you get too powerful equipment, you might also create too much noise for your neighborhood.

so my advice is to always look for directional antennas and always make sure that the strength is "just enough", otherwise you'll be decreasing quality of someone else's connection which might motivate them to also buy better equipment and therefore decreasing signal/noise ratio for whole neighborhood.

Has Jeff Atwood Jumped the Shark?

Or you could sell your $90+ Xbox 360 wireless dongle on eBay, get a 50 ft. network cable for < $10, and be done with it :-)

Frank++;

This Xbox is costing you a fortune!

I wonder how well the adapters that let you network over your house's power lines compare. Your game console has to be plugged in anyway, so being tied to an outlet for the network isn't a problem like it would be for a laptop.

I had the same problem with my ps3 and zbox original+xbmc and the best solution for me was PLC. 802.11g is enought for my laptop but dind't do job for my consoles. I've forget all the wifi problems with intensive network usage.

I realize that your Gigabit router prevents you from running custom router firmware, but DD-WRT allowed me to jack my wireless signal strength way up without any additional hardware.

If you have a router that can handle DD-WRT or Tomato firmware, it's well worth the upgrade. Not only do get to boost your signal strength without buying hardware, but you get additional features (like QOS) for free.

Also worth mentioning is that you can easily chain wireless routers. Before DD-WRT, I got coverage through the house by running a network cable between 2 wireless routers and disabling DHCP on the "slave" router.

I've just finished tweaking my network to improve my 360's bandwidth (both for Media Extender purposes, and to access data on my WHS).

I spent a while playing with various Wireless-G antennas and TX settings, but even the best get nowhere near the maximum throughput of 802.11g. I ended up moving to Wireless-N and buying the WGA600N Wireless-N bridge to plug my 360 into. (Which costs the same as the G adapter for the 360!)

Currently my network is a WRT54G that plugs into my cable modem and provides both DHCP and a Wireless-G network. I then have a gigabit Airport Extreme plugged into the WRT54G which provides a Wireless-N only 5GHz network.

My Windows Home Server and Media Center both plug into the AE router. Our laptops use the Wireless-N network, as does the 360 via the aforementioned bridge, and my Wii/DS/iPhone use the Wireless-G.

I'm considering replacing the WGA600N with another Airport Extreme and then setting it up as a WDS station. This should improve performance a bit, and also give me network sockets for my PS3 and Wii without the need for an extra hub.

Wow... all this to avoid running a cable? I ran a cable to my media center room and put a router behind it which now connects to TiVO, XBox and a cable that goes to an upstairs router. Granted I only had to go through one wall.

But, the fastest and most secure network is still that which travels via cable! You don't happen to have FiOS TV? If so, you can get a second NIM to bridge the MoCA network back to enternet to connect to your XBox. Even if you don't have FiOS you can use these... you would just need two. That is assuming you have one CATV cable near your router.

I would also agree with one comment above... take a look at the wireline extenders.

BOb

I have my WiFi router upstairs in my computer room, but my Wii (and possibly soon PS3) downstairs in the TV den. Rather than an antenna, I'm thinking I would be best off just buying a repeater and placing it somewhere in-between.

From what I can tell, you can get WiFi repeaters for ~$40, about the same price as these antennas.

Yeah, DD-WRT bridge worked for me. It was also a good excuse to buy an Airtunes airport back in the day. I'd like to go to N, but the standards need to settle first. Of course, I'd never have figured any of this out if Comcast hadn't been so completely unhelpful in our last house: they refused to fix the cable so I could put the modem & router on the third floor, so I had to hide it in the entertainment center and bridge my way up to flights of stairs. Having the router there worked out well, but no thanks to them.

I had a similar situation, but different results. What worked best for me was placing the wireless router on top of a book shelf in a more central location. This increased the signal from 2 bars to 100% signal. The extra antenna I bought was a waste of money even though it claimed +7db of signal.

> Or you could sell your $90+ Xbox 360 wireless dongle on eBay, get a 50 ft. network cable for less than $10, and be done with it :-)

The room with the 360 is outside the house. Hmm, I wonder how my neighbors would feel about a network cable running out the back door, across the lawn and patio? Sheesh. Give me a credit for at least a little brainpower here, folks.

> I had a similar situation, but different results.

Totally. I meant to re-emphasize this in the conclusion, and I forgot-- but it is ABSOLUTELY true that there are so many variables in wireless networking that you can't take blanket advice. You have to try it yourself, experiment with your setup, and see what results you get. When it comes to wireless networking equipment, it might be a good idea to buy from a local store with a return policy.

All this work to keep a wireless network hobbling along? I gave up trying to make my wireless more powerful and installed network cables in my house. A few hours under the house with a long drill bit, some bulk CAT5 cable, fish tape, a crimper, a wallboard saw and I was in business. I still have wireless for my wireless devices, but no longer do I have to hope the winds of luck are blowing my way so my console can connect to it!

Jeff, you seem to be a guy willing to build stuff on your own - so bite the bullet and go wired! You'll be much happier with wires - I sure am.

"The room with the 360 is outside the house. Hmm, I wonder how my neighbors would feel about a network cable running out the back door, across the lawn and patio? Sheesh. Give me a credit for at least a little brainpower here, folks."

How do they feel about there being a room outside your house?

I agree with the wire-lovers on this one, Jeff. Learn how to run wiring, put an ethernet drop behind your TV, problem solved. You can even install a 2x or 4x outlet and you'll have increased scalability. You just can't go wrong, it's:

-Cheaper
-More Reliable
-More Secure
-Faster
-Did I mention cheaper? You've just spent ~$150 on this wireless setup, when you could have gotten some cable and RJ-45 outlets for something more like $20-30.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of wireless, I love it on laptops, but for something as static as an X-Box sitting on your entertainment center, $150 and an increased wireless footprint are a little overkill. Not to mention the fact that you are enabling Microsoft's ridiculous pricing scheme of $90 for a wireless adapter that's worth $30.

And you call Apple computers a "dongle".....

Have you tried the ghetto version?
http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template/index.html

"The room with the 360 is outside the house. Hmm, I wonder how my neighbors would feel about a network cable running out the back door, across the lawn and patio? Sheesh. Give me a credit for at least a little brainpower here, folks."

Okay so buy some PVC and bury it 4" under the surface. For someone who just promoting DIY antennae, you seem very allergic to actual DIY. You just went out and bought a new antenn, so what was the point of even showing DIY projects?

Just want to add a little more to what lubos mentioned already. There are, depending on what part of the world you are in, limits on how much power you can radiate in any one direction as well as overall. In general in the United States you will be hard pressed to exceed this limit unless you are both running a high gain antenna *and* a router that allows you to adjust your power to unacceptable levels.

Apologies for the annoying units, as they're not terribly useful if you don't deal with them often, but I think they're the only way to sufficiently explain what you can live with. Effective Radiated Power, or ERP refers to the power output by the radio, not regarding the effect of the antenna structure. Equivalent Isotropically Radiated Power, or EIRP is the amount of power that you would have to put into an antenna with no gain in any direction in order to achieve the same effect. Power is generally measured in dBm, or decibels with respect to a reference power of 1 milliwatt, and gain of antennas as dBi, or decibels with respect to a reference antenna with no gain in any direction. Within the context of this discussion they can be added, but a real treatment of the subject is a moderately scary wall of text.

In North America you are limited to 30 dBm ERP with a maximum of 6 dBi antenna gain, for an EIRP value of 36 dBm. If the combination of output power and antenna gain in your system exceeds 36 dBm you are required to reduce radiated power to compensate. In Europe I believe (but am far from an authoritative source) your maximum EIRP value is 20 dBm, which is vastly weaker, and easy to exceed. I don't know what the ERP value is, but I would assume that equipment purchased there complies.

One solution that is not presented, and is of less use in Jeff's situation is that of a highly directional antenna on a 'problem device' such as the Xbox, because presumably other devices in the house don't have this problem. Directional antennas work both way, and will help you hear a distant transmitter more clearly, however you will be transmitting, so you will still have to pay attention to the output of the end device. Additionally these devices are less likely to have an antenna that you can replace, as well as have fine grained control over the power output of the radio.

Your so dumb. You could just run a sky bridge between the roofs of the buildings and run the internets through there. Also it could have a monorail on it and you could hang your laundry on it to dry it off.

I propose that you give a prize the the 100th comment to the effect of: "I didn't bother to read any of the comments but just run some wiring duh."

I updated the original post-- in red-- in a futile attempt to stem the raging tide of "ya big dummy! run wires!" comments.

Believe me, I love wires as much as the next bandwidth-loving nerd. It's also why I think owning a router without Gigabit is a serious waste of money. 100 megabit wired connections? Really? That's all you got? What year is it again?

To be clear, the room containing the 360 is *physically outside the house*, which makes wireless mandatory.

> Okay so buy some PVC and bury it 4" under the surface .. you seem very allergic to actual DIY

I think there's a teeny bit of difference between building a cantenna and, uh, burying 15 feet of PVC 4" under the surface of a concrete patio.

I know it's been mentioned by others, but also I've had success with installing third-party firmware, and increasing the power output. I actually have 2 wireless routers, functioning as a bridge between 2 parts of the house. All the devices (computers, xbox) plug into the wired ports on the routers.

>I think there's a teeny bit of difference between building a cantenna and, uh, burying 15 feet of PVC 4" under the surface of a concrete patio.

But you have to admit making a TBM and excavating a tunnel for your cables would be an impressive DIY project ;)

The "waveguide cantenna" link is the coolest thing I've seen in a while.

However, the proper way to do this is to wire the house and all out-buildings with cable and/or fiber.

Haha, I feel your pain Jeff. I am a support engineer, and I know what it feels like for people to ignore what you tell them, and prove how much more "intelligent" they are than you.

Folks, read what the man says before you make a fool of yourself. Details, in the real world, do count...

And thanks for the insightful topic Jeff!

Have you considered powerline networking? Like the netgear HDXB111?

> > Okay so buy some PVC and bury it 4" under the surface .. you seem very allergic to actual DIY
>
> I think there's a teeny bit of difference between building a cantenna and, uh, burying 15 feet of PVC 4" under the surface of a concrete patio.

Only 15 feet huh ? (Which, if I'm guessing correctly is 5 meters.) I actually have a CAT5 cable running zigzagged through our yard for some 40~42 meters in a PVC. It took me only a day to plac that cable 30~35 cm deep, which included opening two stretches of paving. Granted, though, I didn't do it alone, I had my father's help, not to mention the pavement wasn't solid concrete.

Either way, I must admit the pure technical and intellectual challenge of setting up a wireless network is much more enjoyable and exciting than digging up dirt and dumping a cable in it.

Hey Now Jeff,
Gotta love those pringles. They sure do get stuck in my teeth.
Davo
Coding Horror Fan

Er, the "wimpy antenna" is probably a monopole. Not wimpy at all. The problem is that a proper installation of a monopole requires a good ground plane. You'll find that with proper grounding this antenna can work quite well. In practice almost as well as a dipole. Especially if it has a diversity receiver.

But proper grounding can be a pain in the rear. Tying in the the electrical ground can be dangerous and likely to add substantial noise. Running a proper RF ground can get tedious and/or expensive.

A dipole would be just as easy to build as a "cantenna", provide just as much effective gain, and if vertically polarized still be omnidirectional on your floor plane.

BTW - when you are talking effective numbers the stand is the dipole (dbd). But since most of those antennas you see advertised are actually less efficient than the dipole (the gain would be negative) the marketing types use a fictional standard called an isotropic antenna (dbi). The isotropic is the worse possible design in terms of "gain". And it can't even be built in real life.

>But you have to admit making a TBM and excavating a tunnel for your cables would be an impressive DIY project ;)

That is so far fetched c'mon!
I think your wireless setup adequately solves your problems but considering the money you spent on it a router linkage setup might have been better (i know you have another router somewhere in that house of yours).

I just can't believe your wife has relegated your gaming to the shed. :) Hope there's heat in there!

Shame on you for not renting a backhoe and a concrete mixer and doing it up right!

As exciting as spending a crapload of money on different antennas sounds, it's both cheaper and better to lay a pipe for network cabling. It's no easy task (my father and I dug a 35 foot trench for power to go to an external swimming pool a few years back), but it has a ton of advantages.

* You'll reduce the noise you let into the neighborhood.
* You'll save power.
* You'll save money.
* You'll be able to run more than one cable into the external house, in case you ever want to do more outside.
* You'll get exercise.

And you even still get tech challenges.

* Did you attach the pipes well enough to prevent leakage? (Basic... even an OK job will last you for at least 10 years)
* Did you provide yourself a method for pulling and replacing bad wires? (Intermediate)
* Can you convince your wife? (Advanced)

To get even better signal, you might want to look into replacing the antenna on the WAP in your house. Both sides transmit data so right now the outbuilding -> house has good signal, but house-> outbuilding still has spotty connection. Something to think about (and more money to spend!)

And then there's the strainer thing:
http://www.dailywireless.org/2004/05/14/long-range-usb-wifi-cheap/

A HTPC and Xbox 360 setup video is available on the XBL Marketplace. They recommend using an 802.11a network in the less crowded 5GHz band (the 360 wireless network adapter supports 802.11a). What would your performance be like if you switched to an ABG router, or like Andrew said above, rigging up an 802.11n bridge?

Surely avoiding signal noise would be better than powering through it?

diggin up the lawn and laying a cable is just like linux. Cheaper/free only if your time is worthless.

I see some people recommending dd-wrt. Don't do it! Go with Tomato or one of the firmwares based on good old Linux rather than the Linksys stock firmware.

Read about the reasons not to use dd-wrt here:

http://www.bitsum.com/about-ddwrt.htm

dd-wrt is not an open source project; it even tries to violate the GPL (see link).

dd-wrt is full of bugs (just look at its bug tracker; new bugs are introduced with every new version).

dd-wrt is ill-performant. don't take my word for it; try a different firmware and compare.

oh look! top link from google for "wireless network extender":
http://compnetworking.about.com/od/wireless/ss/wirelessgear_7.htm

Yeah, I went through this rigmarole with wireless. Screw it - Home Plugs are the way forward! If you've got power, you've got network.

ps. anyone want to buy a wireless bridge for their Xbox 360?

Hey Now Jeff,
I never new about the cantenna.
Coding Horror Fan,
Catto

the gaming shed may be on a different power circuit from the rest of the house, so I don't know if network over mains power would work.

>I think there's a teeny bit of difference between building a >cantenna and, uh, burying 15 feet of PVC 4" under the surface of a >concrete patio.

One word Jeff, jackhammer.

No, a jackhammer would not be efficient, a true geek would use dynamite.

Never mind the jackhammer. I'm going to use the Jeffhammer!

Wouldn't it be easier to just move your games room 15ft and rebuild it attached to your main building?

Oh wait, no it wouldn't. Go wireless!

Hey Now Jeff,

I sure do like wireless.

Coding Horror Fan,

Cetto

> I think there's a teeny bit of difference between building a cantenna and, uh, burying 15 feet of PVC 4" under the surface of a concrete patio.

Well, if it's a concrete patio, what's wrong with simply running a cable over it? No, I don't mean "up in the sky", nor "30 cm below" - I mean right over it. Yeah, you probably couldn't just put any cable, but if it's got some sort of protection, why not? Maybe you're bothered by looks? That's just silly (plus it's unnoticeable anyway).

9db more without wasting a money:

http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/index.html
(it's only needed a paper, glue and metalic film)

Note.- This template y better than the other one already posted from freeantennas.com

>One word Jeff, jackhammer.

>No, a jackhammer would not be efficient, a true geek would use dynamite.

Dynamite, Shmynamite.
Set up a flowing water system that gradually wears through the concrete, creating a smooth surface.
For faster results use acid. :)

>It's both cheaper and better to lay a pipe for network cabling.

As with all Big DIY, the caveat here should be "As long as you get it right."

When DIY goes well, cheap and quick. When DIY goes badly, slow, expensive and humiliating.

run a cable + hang some Chinese Paper Lanterns from it =
gigabit networking for your game room and ambient lighting for the patio.

Sheesh, no need for animosity. How was I to know that there's a concrete porch in the way?

Haha, Rudolf may be on to something.

I used to have similar problems.
But Mark's Infinite Solutions solved it for me:
http://www.marksinfinitesolutions.com/tutorials/default.asp?tutorial=IS_Wifi

Cheers,
Craig

Hey Jeff,

with this setup (specially considering the distance + use of wpa or wpa2), is the latency of the network still good to play games? do you happen to know what is the average ping time (if the xbox provides this info)? and how was it before with the older antenna?

As socrates said, try http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/index.html

No fancy graph, but my Tivo box reports the signal as 60-70% now, when it was just 40% before the windsurfer.

A comment about 'requirement' for gigabit (1000Mbit) network/switch:

A gigabit network is NOT necessary unless you're running a NAS server with NFS/CIFS and sharing data files. For all other uses, including streaming, a standard 100Mbit network is _more_ than adequate.

For instance you may think you need a gigabit network to stream DVDs from you server to your Xbox. But streaming a single DVD is about 5-8Mbit of your 100Mbit pipe! Blue-Ray HD media is about 38MBit/sec and HD-DVD media is about 28MBit/sec.

Plus if you install any streaming clients like Apple TV, Xbox 360 Media Center Extender, etc. they all come with 100Mbit network ports. So it's rather pointless to install gigabit for streaming applications.

Actually, *any* networking is going to be somewhat costly, *if* one doesn't already have all of the gear in one's workshop. To go wired, one needs a crimper, RJ-45 connectors, and cable, not to mention external conduit, a fish, and other stuf most of us don't have (even *if* you're a long-time homeowner.)

*If* one has all of those things, then there's still the issue of using one's weekend(s) for manual labor. It ain't laziness, but some of us reserve the weekend for more pleasureable projects, not for activities like digging up part of the backyard and water-proofing underground conduit....

I love the floods of suggestions on how you could better design your infrastructure to not need this kind of solution, completely missing the point of the post that you found extending wireless network with home-made antennae is cool and fun.

Recently i had to help setup wireless network for my friend. He wanted to share his network with neighbor. He lives in apartments and his neighbor lives in same apartments in a building across a walkway, so approximately there are 200 feet between them. Being a regular reader of this blog I found this article and showed it to friend.

First thing, we went to a local Fry's Electronics in search of a powerful antenna. I was gonna go with HAI7MD but the friend liked the Cantenna, so he bought it. I remember reading some bad reviews about Cantenna so I was not so sure it'll work.

Anyways, it turned out great and we did not even need an extension cable; originally we wanted to put cantenna on the balcony. The signal was pretty strong and seemed very reliable ( 5 bars out of six ). I wanted to run some fine tuning soft but couldn't get it to work; i think because of Vista OS. Another thing to note is that during our setup it was heavily raining so I guess the signal will be even stronger when its clear.

Anyways, great post.

After working in Tech Support for a company that manufactures wireless Access Points and CPE equipment, you hit it right on the button.

You could do all the simulations in the world, do everything on paper and then only after you set up your equipment, find out that your neighbor is jamming out 12db of signal from their badly installed omni antenna. People constantly ask why a particular radio/antenna doesn't work for them, even though they did no site survey, not even something as simple as taking a laptop out to the location to see what they could see.

Also, a general tip for when you're just doing a point-to-point connection ( like what you seem to be doing, just AP->XBox ), the more directional antenna you use, the better. Not only does the FCC allow you to use more powerful antennas when you use a directional antenna, you also get less noise and interference.

Keep up the awesome work!

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