WiFi Adaptors and Aerials

Thanks AFrogley for your clear and succinct summary of the options. I am much obliged.

I am tending towards what you have listed as option 2 - a PC Card that can take an external aerial. I have found what looks to be a good one here. The same company have several offerings of which this one looks the best for my situation.

I an intrigued by your option 3 which appears to be the one mentioned by jonjo and TrueBlue. It would seem that the Airbridge mentioned by BlueChip is a variation on the same theme though they use the term 'Bridge' in their ads rather than 'Access Point.' (Can anyone tell me the difference?) Before starting this thread I had thought that an Access Point was used at the Server end (in our case - the Marina) and that the device required at the Client end (our laptops) was an Adaptor. Can anyone explain why I was wrong to think that? Has anyone any first-hand experience of using an Access Point (aka Bridge) either as a remote Adaptor (3a) or as a Repeater (3b)? What advantages does it have over the other methods? Can any Access Point be used for 3a and/or 3b or is there something special in the specifications that one would have to look for?
 
I found this http://www.cantenna.com/index.html seems just the thing a US firm would market! In- expensive to make but works well.
I also dont get the "airbridge" everything ive seen is ment to be part of the system starting with a cable in the wall.
As for an accsses point in a tuperware box!! Again will only ditribute a signal from an adsl or cable modem and need a wire conection from that modem.

From what i have seen we want either an antenna that plugs into our laptop somehow(but how) or an old laptop without wi-fi for which we buy a "pc card" with wi-fi addapter AND antenna adapter intigrated.

So far in the last two years wi-fi addapter cards are given away,either with accsses points D-link costing £20 or routers again d-link costing £35/40. Other makes also mostly included free wi-fi cards, though now less and less as all laptops sold in the last two years have wi-fi intigrated.
The problem seems to be to find a card that will simply act as an atenna plug for the installed card.
Another solution, With IBM and Acer the anntena position is shown i will try tapeing the inner coax wire from a DIY anntena to the wi-fi antenna and see what happens to the signal. If you are unlucky enough to have an apple then you can pull out the wire which is in the battery compartment and works baddly in that possition--apple alway cheepen their produts, but it will at least make antenna atachment easy.
 
NP /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I do have experience of the access points in bridging mode. It is an access point acting as a relay unit - pure and simple... a bit like relaying a panpan/mayday signal over the VHF except it is done by computer - automatically.... It is most likely that the marina are using the same setup - as it is easier than running cabling to each of their access points, especially as CAT5 is not external grade so would need to be fibreoptic...
Setting up with one of these will be more complex than a wireless card in your laptop, but ultimately give you better signal and less cables than a wired external antenna...

My personal preference would be to go for a USB with external antenna ( I already have a spare one I could utilise on the boat) and only use an Access point if it was going to be used more frequently.
 
Where can i find an USB externl antenna?????

I have a D-LINK accsses point siting hear. It has an antenna to SEND the signal,but all the other connections are for cable LAN connections out and CABLE in from the modem sourse--either ADSL or CABLE but no where can i find either on this or any sold at the computor store a way to enter a signal received via the 2.4meg radio signal generated and sent by router,which gets its connection via CABLE from the modem in the capitanerie.

How then can for example the widest sold accsses point D-LINK get the signal from sent by the capitanerie and relay it to my laptop wirelessly???????
 
Where can I buy a USB external antenna???

Any reasonable computer shop will have, or can supply, wifi antennae, be they PCMCIA cards or USBconnected. Here in Spain they retail between 50 to 60€'s. You can buy a bit cheaper on auction sites such as E-bay.

I don't understand the questions that you are asking in 2nd paragraph.
 
I think your thinking that you need two aerials to work that access point .... you don't...

What I think you have is a standard Access Point capable of running several wireless connections at the same time, units connected via wireless can see/talk to each other as well as talk to the bit on the LAN. The antenna does both the SEND and RECEIVE bit, and can do this for several connections at the same time.
You cannot just plug an Antenna into the RJ45 socket.

Can you tell us what you are trying to achieve with your AP and what model it is....
 
That links REALLY useful,next im going to make one of these [url=http://www.cantenna.com/]http://www.cantenna.com/ or one of these t quicker to make:http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk

My only thought is if the d-link will conflict with my in built wi-fi connector? If i dose the im going to have to do somthing about my old compaq--
Great link REALLY really useful to bring the wi-fi signal in

Im sorry this link refers to another post on another page!! i dident notice there were 3 pages of replys!! Now im lost hear!! but
 
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