mario a. spinthiras

While moving around lately I needed something that could boost up my wireless range a little to help the neighbors offer me their wifi services a little easier. So I figured since I was in London I should shop around and pickup a few basic ingredients to make it happen for me. Here are my new geek toys that helped out on extending my wireless range without a lot of fuss.

Shopping Around

I first took a stroll into a PC World. They had some sort of a “tech” counter where you could ask a few things. I asked the guy if he had a few things on what I was looking for and he was not able to explain the technicalities behind setting up a more advanced wireless setup. This isn’t his fault , it simply isn’t his field.

I obviously knew what I wanted so I turned towards the one place where I knew couldn’t let me down. Amazon!

The Ingredients

1 x Edimax EW-7318USG Wireless USB LAN Adapter 4dBi Antenna, 802.11b.g 54Mbps @ £11.99

9db 2.4GHz Rubber Duck ReSMA @ £6.37

Base for Rubber duck 50cm ReSMA lead @ £5.60

Belkin Pro Series USB Extension Cable 3m @ £3.28

Be cautious of chipset

Priorly checking the Edimax usb adapter support Linux very well since it uses the popular growing Ralink chipset , the rt73. The USB adapter does not do N unfortunately , I did look for something that could do the job for me but I was constrained by time. The wireless USB adapter comes with a small 4dBi antenna which we obviously don’t really need since we will be using the larger 9dB antenna ordered extra. I did save the antenna in the case of a rainy day.

Note that injection is supported with this model of the Ralink chipset.

Put together time

The antenna screws onto the base , the USB adapter does not natively work with Linux , you need to download and compile the respective kernel module from the ralink website. Fortunately they are aware of the Linux community and do not act on ignorance towards us so they have great support in drivers and kernel modules for their products.

The base plus into the USB adapter and the USB extension cable is simply to be able to distance the computer for the location of the antenna (though I found that a long USB extension cable isn’t very recommended practice.)

Results?

I cannot say I was disappointed in any way but then again nor did it do anything I wasn’t expecting. I did pickup dozens of wireless networks and using it while driving around makes your mouth water on how many it can pickup and monitor. I did eventually do what I wanted to do and it worked well.

Observations.

I am going to email Ralink about this because I believe it’s an issue related to drivers. On Windows Vista it seems to be picking up a lot less than what it does on Linux. I compared the two to see what goes on with this chipset in Windows and it looks as if there might be a driver issue. The Linux support for this USB driver is amazing. You should try it.

Whats Next?

I am thinking of trying this one.

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