I took my BB line with me from my parents when I got married and moved out, and they have been w/o BB Internet since. They didn’t want any. At one time Netvigator offered to move the line to anywhere I wanted for free as well as lower the cost to ~HK$150/month (super price!) if I renew my contract. My folks have no use for it, and my brother didn’t want to pay for it, so they remained on dial-up, which isn’t very practical as a long term solution these days. Imagine: no Windows Update, and Firebird/Thunderbird, Kerio firewall, Spybot S&D etc. all need to be downloaded from somewhere else and burnt onto a CD. At one point their WinXP machine was constantly at 100% CPU. It was compromised.
My folks’ next door neighbour (we have known them for a long time) has BB for their daughter in 2nd form. I offered to lend them a wireless BB router/firewall, in exchange for use of some of their bandwidth, and they accepted.
The problem is, there are about 4 walls between our computer and our neighbour’s computer. Seeing that I don’t get much signal on my dinning table from the WiFi router in my study, I was quite skeptical. I bought a Planex BLW-04GM, for its free included 5dB antenna, and its metal casing which is thermally better. The more popular Linksys is slightly cheaper and has 2 but weaker antennas, but I want to eliminate the overheating problem.
There are now 4 walls and the thick side of a bookshelf between the Planex and my WiFi bridge sitting on top of my brother’s computer, and the connection is at 2Mbps w/ 11% signal strength. Not ideal, but still BB speed. Connection on my X40 in the sitting room is at full blast 54Mbps w/ over 60% signal strength. I should be able to improve this by putting the Planex on top of the bookshelf.
I’m patting my own back.
Observation while I was playing w/ the Planex at home: yes it is capable of covering my whole flat (including the maid’s bedroom). However, sftp from X40 to home server hits ~240KB/s via 802.11b on Buffalo, but only ~200KB/s via 802.11g on Planex. Assuming that the signal output of the Planex is about the same as the Buffalo, maybe I should invest in that BMF 6.5dB antenna to compliment my trusty old Buffalo instead of getting a new 802.11g WiFi router.
Incidentally, this particular Planex model is nowhere to be found on the Japanese Planex site, but looks virtually identical to this Buffalo WYR-G54. Odd.
2 responses so far ↓
1 James // Mar 19, 2005 at 11:44 am
The Linksys on its own probably would not have gone thru all those walls. Between my bed room and my Linksys g router, with one antanna point straight up and one point towards the Fujitsu notebook, there is a window and a brick wall, and it is fluctuation between low and very good single strength. At work, the PB still doesn’t get full signal strength even when it is less than 3ft from the Linksys b router with pactically nothing in between.
2 Chris // Mar 19, 2005 at 5:13 pm
I just embarked on a similar venture last week. Using the same Planex BLW-04GM router with the +5 antenna to network a house.
Was able to get some advice from an antenna expert and the explanation was quite interesting. Even though both antennas are called omni-directional, the +5 can actually render you unable to receive signals if you move around and manage to escape its narrower field of reception.
In my case, the house was really big and we wanted reception over all 3 floors so we put the normal antenna back on with excellent results. Could’ve saved the extra $60hk spent buying the extra-strength bundle.
In terms of finding it on the planex site, I found that router on the planex US site.
http://www.planex.net/product/router/blw-04gm.htm
You can also flash it with the US firmware to get an english interface, despite what the US site warns about, it works perfectly in english.