Wi-Fi Questions

[MossRoad]

<font color="blue"> can cover a couple of miles with line of sight easily </font>

A friend of mine is running one that is 13 miles with no amplification. But his antennas are up 150' on one tower and 300' on another tower and he is using $500.00+ radios. But it is still amazing. The 150' is a directional antenna and the 300' is an omni-directional. Funny thing is, the omni-directional cannot be picked up until you get about 2 miles away from it, due to the angle that it uses(something like +- 3 degrees).

 

[MossRoad]

<font color="blue"> my computer detected a wireless signal right here at home </font>

It might be detecting itself.

 

[jlemon]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( the omni-directional cannot be picked up until you get about 2 miles away from it, due to the angle that it uses(something like +- 3 degrees). )</font>

Yup; sounds like this one doesn't have any down-tilt, and is just used for long range links. Omnis that are used for local access points are angled down in order to get local ground coverage. This limits their range, but doesn't have the huge coverage hole at the base of the installation as you noted.

 

[Hank]

<font color="brown"> A friend of mine is running one that is 13 miles </font>

Our local cable company is testing a wireless cable modem service with a 10 mile LOS range.

I just signed on with a different wireless Internet provider, using yet another type of service (MMDS). The antenna on my roof talks to a tower on top of a mountain 30 miles away! That tower backhauls to another mountaintop, 30 miles distant, to yet another mountaintop 30 miles distant from that, before making the final 15 miles to the servers. I am getting a steady 768/256 Kbps with land-based latency (30-50 ms). Amazing what they are doing with wireless these days.