wireless antenna

I have a new (6 months old) Gateway laptop, model 4025.
It has worked well on the wireless system until I recently moved my
office about 400 feet away.
The signal had been low but now it is gone. I am left with dial-up!
I want to add an external antenna to get back on the system but there
is no external antenna connection. I don't even know where the wireless
card. How do I locate it to see what I can do?
or do I have to buy a new card and insert it into the card slot and
then modify that card for the external antenna? Thanks

"hawkeye" <(E-Mail Removed)> hath wroth:

>I have a new (6 months old) Gateway laptop, model 4025.
>It has worked well on the wireless system until I recently moved my
>office about 400 feet away.
>The signal had been low but now it is gone. I am left with dial-up!
>I want to add an external antenna to get back on the system but there
>is no external antenna connection. I don't even know where the wireless
>card. How do I locate it to see what I can do?
>or do I have to buy a new card and insert it into the card slot and
>then modify that card for the external antenna? Thanks

Well, there are a few options, none of which are guaranteed. 400ft is
a LONG way to go, especially if you're going through walls, trees,
buildings, etc. Before trying any of these, make sure that you at
least have some line of sight, or it probably won't work.

1. Open the lid that covers the radio (bottom of laptop). Note the
two tiny pieces of coax cable going to a MiniPCI card. Remove one
cable and attach a u.FL to RP-SMA pigtail. Purchase an external
directional antenna with a RP-SMA connector. Be careful because the
u.FL connectors are very fragile and will not survive more than a few
insertion/removal cycles.

2. Buy a wirless USB dongle, or PCMCIA radio card. Disable, in
software, the internal wireless card. Hopefully, it will work better
but will probably require an external antenna.

3. Install a reflector or external antenna on your wireless access
point that's aimed in the direction of your new office.
http://www.FreeAntennas.com

4. If this is all in the same building, consider a wired or wireless
extension that uses either the phone lines (HomePNA) or the power
lines (HomePlug). If this is an office building, power line probably
won't work because there's too much junk on the power lines.

5. Install a wireless repeater, range extender, etc. I don't like
these, but they sometimes work. A WDS bridge/repeater is better, but
that requires that your unspecified access point and the WDS repeater
both support WDS and should probably be the same model.

6. Run 400ft of CAT5 cable and forget about wireless. Although the
official limit is 300ft, I've run 1000ft without errors or problems.

7. If the building has a CATV system, you can piggyback data on the
cable. See:
http://www.multilet.com/us/baseband/...duct_range.htm
for one such system. There are others.


--
Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558