Need a long range N adapter that's solid

[MfA]

At 12 cm wavelength you have a little wiggle room ...

Mize you're right ... it doesn't need to be grounded, I wasn't thinking right.

 

[Frank]

At 12 cm wavelength you have a little wiggle room ...

Well, after Googling and seeing the recommended DIY solutions, I'm pretty sure that there was more than 6 cm variance in the radius of the different proposed designs.

 

[Otto Dafe]

Have you found anything yet Digi, because I am now looking for the exact same thing.

 

[Grall]

Note, the metal of the USB connector has to touch the sieve.

Then you'll be grounding the sieve, and isn't that bad when it comes to antennas and radio waves and whatnot (think "you're holding it wrong"/iPhone4 debacle)...?

 

[Grall]

I'm not too clear on the disadvantages though... I mean, the connection is going through another device, so I'd think there would be some sort of slowdown or lag. *shrug*

There'd be a tiny bit of lag (order of handful of milliseconds), but you'll also get more congestion on the channel you've picked. There'll be yet another device spewing out packets in the same frequency space, meaning more collisions and whatnot, and the more packets are flying about the worse it'll get, meaning if someone's doing heavy downloading (*cough*anime bittorrenting...*ahem*) everything will get sent out twice on your wireless network. This would likely be much worse for response times (and for all devices, not just your kid's laptop.)

...Assuming repeaters don't broadcast on a different channel than they receive that is - if such a thing is possible with consumer wifi equipment. I'm not sure, I've never had to try using repeaters.

 

[MfA]

Then you'll be grounding the sieve, and isn't that bad when it comes to antennas and radio waves and whatnot (think "you're holding it wrong"/iPhone4 debacle)...?

You don't want to ground an antenna, but a reflector can be grounded ... or it can float ... either works.

 

[Otto Dafe]

Well, I solved my problem by chucking a 50 ft. cable out of the 2nd story window (because packet loss is for sissies), but here is a summary of my research:

If you can get everything on 5 Ghz that should help a lot. Beyond that, if you get a high-gain (usually 1-2W) antenna, you probably want a directional antenna. A high gain omni antenna will probably just bounce around more, which would boost signal strength on the same level of the house, but might diminish range through walls and such.