Hi all,
I bought an Dlink 614+ a while back on special ($39 after rebate).
The picture in the store showed the unit supplied with 2 antennas,
when I got it home, the unit only had one external antenna.
Bummer, but I intend sticking a larger antenna on (cantenna) so what
the hell…
To cut a long story short, construction of the cantenna went fine, but
measurements using NetStumbler and an 802.11b equipped laptop
indicated no gain improvement when attached to the 614+ (over the
supplied dipole).
After a couple of hours of "this all just smells wrong" I popped the
lid on the 614 and voila, the external coax had come disconnected from
the small daughter board carrying the Wireless Interface (neat little
module, by the way).
What I also noticed was that the unit had a small internal antenna
(active with front panel LED M1).
Having very carefully re-soldered the external antenna coax back onto
the wireless card, the field strength from the unit jumped up 10dB
(now using the supplied dipole) and several dB more using the
cantenna.
So, if you are having range problems with one of these units, unscrew
the two Philips head screws on the base and take a peek inside. My
floating coax was very obvious.
- Mark.
PS For the Cantenna project, Tomato soup cans have slightly more gain
than the Chicken variety.
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