I just bought (and returned) a Radio Labs RVWave usb wifi adapter and
antenna. It didn't work any better (or worse) than the wifi card built into
my laptop. It (and my laptop card) would only give me about 200 feet usable
range from my home wifi router. Other users reported similar results on
Panbo. Out of 3 or 4 posters only one said it worked.

The Engenius system looks nice, but requires 110V ac for the Ethernet DC
injector. It works on 48 V DC, so DC power is not an option on my boat.

I am leaning to a system assembled by a cruiser from commercial parts. See
www.islandtimepc.com. Bob Stewart builds these using an Ubiquiti
Litestation2 board. It is powered by 12V DC injected into the Ethernet cable
and is a 400 mw amplifier. The amplifier specs indicate good sensitivity.
Bob sells a package with cables, POE injector, the Ubiquiti board mounted in
a waterproof NMEA aluminum box and an 8 dB antenna for $329. Skip Grundlach
a cruiser on this board swears by the system.

David

"David Marchand" wrote in
:

I just bought (and returned) a Radio Labs RVWave usb wifi adapter and
antenna. It didn't work any better (or worse) than the wifi card built
into my laptop. It (and my laptop card) would only give me about 200
feet usable range from my home wifi router. Other users reported
similar results on Panbo. Out of 3 or 4 posters only one said it
worked.



It doesn't make any difference if you're mobile is running a kilowatt to
you "home wifi router" running 20 milliwatts (0.020W)! It's not the router
can't hear your big powerful card....it's the card can't hear the peanut
whistle transmitter in the house!

This is also true in many marinas who did wifi on the cheap and are just
running home wifi units. No matter how powerful your boat's wifi
transceiver is....if the marina isn't running similar power levels...it
goes nowhere and the boat equipment can't hear it.

The one that worked had a better base station router with a real antenna.

Larry:

I would have thought that with an 8 dB gain antenna and a more sensitive
receiver, the Radio Lab system should have heard my puny home wifi router
better. It didn't.

I suspect one reason is that my laptop has a pretty good antenna built in to
the flip up screen and so the Radio Lab 8 dB antenna didn't improve much on
it. But the Radio Lab's receiver sensitivity must be no better than the
built in laptop's receiver and that is surprising.

David

"David Marchand" wrote in
:

I would have thought that with an 8 dB gain antenna and a more
sensitive receiver, the Radio Lab system should have heard my puny
home wifi router better. It didn't.

I suspect one reason is that my laptop has a pretty good antenna built
in to the flip up screen and so the Radio Lab 8 dB antenna didn't
improve much on it. But the Radio Lab's receiver sensitivity must be
no better than the built in laptop's receiver and that is surprising.

David




Naw...The 8db antenna might have made a little difference in the receiver
pattern, but the noise floor didn't change, which is what got the tiny
transmitter the sellphone and telephone companies were responsible for it
having in the first place.

Consumer wifi is only supposed to go to the edge of the room....to keep you
from letting your neighbor use it without paying the communications
companies.

On Sun, 21 Sep 2008 13:58:35 -0700, "David Marchand"
wrote:

The Engenius system looks nice, but requires 110V ac for the Ethernet DC
injector.

Easily supplied by a $30 inverter which will also power your laptop
and charge your cell phone.

The Engenius 362 does not require a serial port. It uses a USB port
which also supplies it's power. Excellent price performance with a 9
db antenna mounted in the clear.

"David Marchand" wrote in message
...
I am leaning to a system assembled by a cruiser from commercial
parts. See www.islandtimepc.com. Bob Stewart builds these using an
Ubiquiti Litestation2 board. It is powered by 12V DC injected into
the Ethernet cable and is a 400 mw amplifier. The amplifier specs
indicate good sensitivity. Bob sells a package with cables, POE
injector, the Ubiquiti board mounted in a waterproof NMEA aluminum
box and an 8 dB antenna for $329. Skip Grundlach a cruiser on this
board swears by the system.

David

I second that motion, heartily.

I have yet to go up the mast to change out my Linksys 48V POE, but his
is boat power, as the LiteStation2 can take anything between 5 and
some ridiculous amount of power, the #1 ethernet port on the board
takes the power from the POE directly, and it's what I connect on,
everywhere. However, unless it's been modified since my purchase, I
think it's only 250mw. That's been plenty for me, in any case.

Nuff said on that. Save yourself a bundle of time and aggravation
(see my posts beginning about 3 years ago on the subject, here and in
a couple of electronics/wifi groups) and buy the package unless you're
a serious networking geek and really enjoy that sort of bashing to
arrive at something similar...

--
L8R

Skip

Morgan 461 #2
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