WLAN: Revolutions (or how to get 1337 WiFi)

[JetLinus]

Wow, this site really made my day:

• http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/

It's all about how parabolic dishes and USB WLAN sticks together get really great reception / transmitting power for WLANs.
Especially chinese cooking dishes are recommended. Whatever, before I quote them wrong, just have a look!

Truly great, imagine sharing a DSL / Cable connection with 3 people, or building large and nice private networks over several kilometers...
I definitely WILL look for a parabolic dish now!!!!

Physics is nice

[djbass]

This sort of modding has been going on for some time now. I'm involved with a group of people who are setting up a network of wireless nodes around town using modified ex pay-per-view dishes. So far it's worked really well and we have a network stretching around a 20km radius.

[NEWSBOT3]

nice.

[madman2k30]

any ideas on how i can double up a sky digital dish into a wi-fi reciever?

[JetLinus]

Use the dish, calculate its focus, put the WLAN-Stick in there?

[mist]

iirc, you can get cards with inputs for external ariels. this would seem to be your way forward, rather than botching it with a usb stick

-mist

[djbass]

Originally Posted by madman2k30

any ideas on how i can double up a sky digital dish into a wi-fi reciever?

Most dishes are of a vary simular design so the mod required is fairly universal. Since a lot of dishes are not tuned for 2.4Ghz (the frequency that wi-fi operates on) the process requires removing the down-converter board and either using the stock dipole or making your own.

I based my design on this one here.
A simular mod can also be found here

Some pictures of me modding the antenna here

Originally Posted by mist

iirc, you can get cards with inputs for external ariels. this would seem to be your way forward, rather than botching it with a usb stick

This is true for most PCI based Wi-Fi cards and some but not all PCMCIA cards. Unfortunately with the latter and USB devices a lot of manufacturers only offer the stock antenna which has a piss poor sensitivity.

However most have a very simular circuit design as they all pretty much use the same chipset and mods like this one can be applied to just about any card.

The most important thing is the sensitivity & gain rating of both the Wi-Fi card and the antenna as they have to be carefully matched to get the best performance.

More guides can be found here. Or alternatively how to build one out of a Pringles can here.

[flapjack]

USB sticks are a disaster for WiFi, use PCI or PCMIA cards instead.

Like you said, most USB devices have a terrible antenna and lack an external connector port.

In addition I've found the USB WiFi devices around here hideously expensive compared to PCMIA cards (they're about the same price, but the PCMIA cards have a vastly better range)