bobkoure;626549 Wrote: > I gather these are amps to boost past regulation power levels. There's > no need for that for your usage. There's also the possibility that one > of your neighbors is running one of these, killing your garden > reception. BTW, if you do anything like that, -please- stay away from > channel 6, as that's where most folks who haven't a clue are - they > won't know what hit 'em. Well that depends...
In the USA most houses are built with timber and plasterboard (drywall). This is fairly transparent to wi-fi so US routers can broadcast a signal easily beyond the boundaries of a house and, in that case, a 500mw booster could well swamp the neighbours signal. In the UK, most buildings are built with external walls either of solid stone or brick (at least two bricks wide) or with a double skin, brick on the outside and cinder block on the inside with a cavity usually filled with insulation. This is pretty well impermeable to wi-fi at normal domestic router outputs and the only way a signal can get out of the house any distance is via windows and wooden doors. If the windows are double glazed, even that can be tricky. The result is that using a normal domestic router it is pretty difficult to get a usable signal to extend beyond the external walls of a house for any distance if the router is located centrally within it. Don't be fooled by the fact that you can see a multitude of wi-fi networks in your area, all but your very closest neighbours networks will be unusably weak. Some older houses (such as mine) also have solid brick internal walls. This even makes getting a wi-fi signal from room to room pretty difficult! Solid walls and fitted carpets makes laying ethernet problematic and disruptive. Hence a continual search in the UK for a solution that will provide a LAN connection consistently around a house. Multipath "N" routers are popular, but even these will struggle to broadcast oustide the house. Using PowerPlug devices on your electrical circuits is growing in popularity, but older wiring and modern circuit breaker technology can reduce the usefulness of that. It is no wonder that some people resort to a booster to overcome the physical barriers. My "friend" uses a parabolic directional antenna in the highest part of the loft pointing down through the house so leakage outside the house is minimised. Don't worry about health concerns, the regulations are in place to allow wi-fi networks to co-exist without interference rather than for any health reason. Standing 2m from a 500mw boosted antenna would mean that energy is spread over a roughly 50 square metre spherical surface, or 10mw per square metre. Put a wall or floor between you and the antenna and energy levels are barely measurable. A modern GSM mobile phone has an output power of at least 1w (1000mw) and you are usually a lot closer to your mobile phone than you are to your WiFi antenna! Using a single 500mw booster in your loft will subject you to a massively lower radio energy level than you get from the 100mw wireless antenna in the laptop you are using right now ;) -- TheLastMan Matt http://www.last.fm/user/MJL-UK *SqueezeBoxes:* SB Duet (Controller + two receivers) *Server:* Synology DS107+ NAS (with firmware 2.3-1157) running Squeezebox Server 7.5.3 on Synology Package Manager *Network:* Netgear DG834GT ADSL modem/router, 2 x Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 as access points *Livingroom:* Receiver into Naim 42/110 amp, B&W CM2 speakers *Kitchen:* Receiver into Denon DM37 mini-system, B&W 686 speakers *Study:* Linn LP12, Naim 72/Hi-cap/Headline. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TheLastMan's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=16021 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=87094 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
