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How to REALLY extend your wireless network's range

A group of Ohio college students has successfully set the world record for accomplishing the longest unamplified Wi-Fi link in history.  They were able to communicate between two mountain tops 124.9 miles apart - one near Las Vegas, NV, and one in Utah.  The group smashed their previous record of 55 miles.

In addition to the mountain to mountain connection, they also successfully connected to a wireless access point in Las Vegas (22 miles away) and surfed the Web - now THAT is wireless networking!

To accomplish these feats, they had to do some interesting engineering and hacking.  Here's the equipment they used:

Nevada side

• 12 ft Dish

• Scaffolding tower

• Z-Com XI-325HP+ 300 mw PCMCIA card with dual antenna ports

• Pigtails from RFLINX

• Home Brew Patch Antenna and Feed

• RF relays provided by Zetron

• LMR-400 Coax

• Averatec 3200 Laptop

• Ubuntu Hoary with 2.6.10 kernel

  • Running hostap modules

Utah side

• 10 ft Dish

• Homebuilt collapsible trailer with dish mounted on it

• Z-Com XI-325HP+ 300 mw PCMCIA card with dual antenna ports

• Pigtails from RFLINX

• 3 watt bidirectional amplifier – only used during the amplified portion of the contest

• Home Brew Patch Antenna and Feed

• RF relays provided by Zetron

• LMR-400 Coax

• Averatec 3200 Laptop

• Debian Sarge with 2.6.12.3 kernel

  • Running hostap modules

To find out more about this group of enterprising college students, visit their site at http://www.wifiworldrecord.com/ .

They were also recently written up in Tom's Hardware - that article is here: http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050802_103659.html

Increase wireless network coverage with homemade antenna

You love your wireless home network, but there are certain places in your house where the coverage is really poor or nonexistent.  What many people don't know is that the placement of your wireless router in your house, and the angling of the antennas on your router can have a big effect on the wireless coverage that you will experience.   Now you can create a quick homemade antenna to increase wireless network coverage in your home.  It's cheap, easy and it works!  One of the most popular sites for these homemade wireless router antennas is http://new.freeantennas.com.  They provide step-by-step instructions on how to build a homemade wireless router like the one pictured.