Vex Star

I know of several ways to do this but would like people’s opinions of what they’ve done/read etc.

The router is upstairs and needs to be so I don’t have to run wires behind walls so moving the router is out. I was thinking of extending the antenna via ( I think rg-174) out the window and around the house to the patio where I want the signal strength boosted. The run would be around 50 feet. I’ve talked to a colleague of mine who is big into ham radios (been doing it 50+ years) and he said running the coax that far would negate any signal strength you would get. Don’t know though. Would ohm cable do I need? Rg-174 is tiny and there are thicker coax cables used for wireless signals. (maybe a solid copper wire if I could find it in the right size) Also, I’ve heard you can setup a router as a repeater like the Linksys boosters work. Thought this would probably be the best option. If I have a Linksys ws54g then which router would work with it? Does anyone know? Which is the best option do you think?

You could pick up another WRT54G, install DD-WRT and use that as a repeater.

Or there’s the cheap (and fairly ghetto) way, which is to use a tinfoil parabola to direct the signal towards your patio.
Or just buy new antenna. Fuck the FCC/CRTC! Like they’ll ever notice. Oh, get your HAM operators license and it’s 100% legit, even if you boot others off their wifi

Getting it soon. Is it legal with a tech license or do you need a general/operators license. (operators license is a bit more than what I’m willing to commit too.)

Do you infer that extending the antenna is only legal if you have your ham license? If I do this what is the best way to go about it? *refers to the post above*

edit: Talked to a longtime friend who has been in Ham for over 30 years the other day and he said he’d give me a radio. Meant to pickup a tech book today but forgot.

The FCC isn’t going to give a shit about an antenna that lets you get WiFi on your patio. Hell, you can get bigger antennas for certain routers from Wal Mart.

Now if you buy an amplifier and giant antenna so you can blast WiFi to your entire neighborhood, they might start to look your way.
WRT54G + HyperWRT (bumped up radio power) + upsized antennas = wifi reception through three walls and across the yard about 80 feet to my garage.

What type of antennas and cabling did you use?

Also: Can you use HyperWRT with dd-wrt?

No cabling, just cheapie antennas I found on eBay. What do you mean by using HyperWRT "with" dd-wrt? As in a wireless bridge setup? The only wireless bridge I’ve ever set up was two WRT54G routers with OpenWRT, but I can’t see there being that much a difference between flavors…I could be way off base there, though.

Yea, I guess it’s called a ‘wirless bridge’. Would want my main router running dd-wrt and another router in repeater mode running HyperWRT.

Can’t find anywhere where anyone has done this yet and confirmed it’s ability. Haven’t searched real hard yet but will have to.

btw: if you don’t know what HyperWRT does it’s below. (for those cruzing through)

HyperWRT is a power boost firmware for the Linksys WRT54G and
 WRT54GS router. The goal of this project is to add a limited set of features
 to the last Linksys firmware, extending its possibilities but staying close to
 the official firmware.

HyperWRT is based on Linksys 3.03.6 firmware for the WRT54G and Linksys
 3.37.6 firmware for the WRT54GS.

HyperWRT has these added features :

    * Adjustable Transmit Power & Antenna Select
    * 13 Wireless Channels
    * 'Boot Wait' flash protection
    * Increased Port Forwarding & Triggering Fields
    * Increased Qos Device & Application Fields
    * Increased Access Restrictions Policies & Blocked Services Fields
    * Command Shell
    * Telnet Daemon
    * Startup & Firewall Scripts
    * Uptime
    * ...

Changes in HyperWRT 2.1b1 are :
- Updated codebase to 3.03.6 for WRT54G and 3.37.6 for WRT54GS 

Download for WRT54G:

Download for WRT54GS:

as some people said you can boost your antenna strength with custom firmwares or get special antennas. whatever you do i’d really try to avoid wireless repeaters as that could have a huge impact on your internet performance.

Didn’t know this.

"huge impact" ?

a repeater theoretically cuts your throughput by half (but really it’s not half). so with a G you’re send/receive to the router is 54 (but really it’s about 30) so half that is 27 (but really it’ll be about 15)…………… does your ISP let you download at 15meg?

if your ISP lets you hit 15meg for download then a repeater will throttle you. if they don’t then you won’t notice a difference.

Except that you don’t actually get 54 if you’re far enough away to need a repeater. The simple solution here is an antenna.

wireless has a lot more performance characteristics than bandwidth.

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March 2nd, 2009 | Tags: CRTC, Ebay, Federal Communications Commission, firewall, internet performance, ISP, main router, Quality of Service, two WRT54G routers, wireless bridge, wireless bridge setup, Wireless Channels, wireless range, wireless repeaters, wireless signals, WRT54GS router | Category: general | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL