Kasteo

I'm very new to the WiFi thing so please bare with me. I got Linksys WRT54GS with HyperWRT firmware. I adjust transmit power to 42mW(from 18mW).
My problem is I barely get a signal in my bedroom in the 2nd floor which is about 100m away from the office room where the Linksys WRT54GS is. There is 3 concrete walls in between.
I'm using Microsoft MN-720 Wireless adapter card on my laptop which I can't connect the external antenna this card.
I saw a company that sell a 9 dBi rubber duck antenna :
(
Connector type : RP-TNC
Gain (dBi.) : 9
Height (cm.) : 55
VSWR : < 1.5 : 1
Vertical beam width : 25
Horizontal beam width : 360
).

It can be plug directly for replace the old one at the back of Linksys.
As I'm trying to read several post about antenna in this forum. I still can't understand about multipath and diversity stuffs.
As "Thorn" said in one post..."First, adding an higher gain antenna to one antenna port of the Linksys router will not work. This is due to "antenna diversity." Only one antenna is used at a time."
Is that mean I need two same antennas for my Linksys if I need to use it as a diversity. I can not put one high-gain and one regular antenna...If I need only one high-gain antenna, I will have to disable the diversity function in Linksys right?
Will the use of 2 high gain antennas better than 1? since each high gain antenna is quite expensive.... Will it worth the money?

The last question is will the 9dBi antenna help me get the better signal in my bedroom? Right now I can get only 1 scale from 5 scale if I move my laptop close to the window in my bedroom. I can't use it on the work table which is only 3 meters from that window.

Thank you,

King_Ice_Flash

Can you tell us about how your house is setup? What walls are made of, what floors the stuff is on?

Also, increasing the power of the AP will not help. Your card in your laptop only has so much power, so the AP will not be able to receive your laptops signal.

The problem is signal travels from an antenna in a doughnut shaped patern. Higher gain antennas would be the equivelant of steping on the doughnut to get more distance out of it. Clients above or below the AP would receive poor or no signal.

Higher gain antennas will NOT make signal go through something that is stopping the signal.

I personally would not recomend an omni over 7 dBi gain in most circumstances.

__________________
"Yeah," said a voice from under the table, "you go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel."

Thorn

If you're more than 12.5 degrees above or below an antenna with 25º Vertical beam, you not going to get much.

Yes.

No.

Correct.

That's a decision you'd have to make.

You'll have to do the math. There is no way that we could tell if the signal would reach. Also, such scales are close to useless, since they don't give actual RF figures.

__________________
Thorn
"Read Altas Shrugged. Compare it to today. Repeat as necessary"