MY Outdoor/Waterproof Linksys WRT54G Routers **PICS** (no longer waterproof)

[Exahertz]

thats a little different, 60 watts into the antennae, isn't 60watts EIRP; effective isotropically radiated power. 1 watt into a 6db antennae is ~4 watts eirp. 100 milliwatts into a 17db antennae is ~5 watts EIRP, so you see antennae gain plays a large role, if you got 1 watt into say a 15 db antennae, your up around 30 watts EIRP, so you gotta choose your output to the antennae, and your antennae gain. now if you ask me what i would do (and have done many times) is leave the AP inside, run a cable up to the house with a 250 mw all weather bi-di amp mounted on the antennae pole, have a 12 db parabolic antennae with a bout a 30 degree beam width at both locations. then if i needed throughput with security, i;d get two cisco 1800 series and seup a vpn between the two, i;ve had 22 meg encrypted throughput on short runs with that very setup. HOWEVER, i'm kinda likin what i see that you've done so far, and i think it'll work great. and even though its illegal you can *probably* bend the rules a little bit on the 802.11 EIRP laws. im not telling you to, im just saying that i;ve seen it done before with no issues

so the question is, what db gain are these antenna's?

24dbi gain
Focused at 8 degrees
Vertical polarization

Cool explanation too. From what I read these antennas are rated to handle no more than 60 watts to the feed element. From what I understand the feed element is AKA the radiation resistor. So any more than 60 watts and the feed element/radiation resistor gets too hot and fries

Are you kidding me !!! WOW with those huge antenna you can steal WIFI from 10KM away, COOOOOOL IDEA

Don't you think that cold air will make water inside the box and blow the router ?

Thanks, yea they do look pretty cool in person too. I was totally amazed with the quality of these antennas that cost only $50.
I've got a pigtail cable to connect from the N-type male to the MMCX on my Senao 2511 (prism 2.5 chipset) wifi card. I'm going to use that card and Netstumbler for alignment purposes. But I still can’t believe how many networks I can see.

From ground level using my 7dbi omni-direction antenna I can see about 10-15 routers. When I use the parabolic (and rotating it slowley in 360 degrees) I accumulate well over 100 routers! So the antenna works quite well!
However I’m sure the antenna can do better, the pigtail I’m using has 10 feet of RG174 coax which has some pretty high attenuation in it (at least 6-8 db lost just through the cable). I would have liked to have got a pigtail with some LMR coax which is almost the same size cable but half the attenuation.
The patch cable I’m using between the antennas and routers is RG214 and only 18 inches of it.

Oh and BTW, even though I have cracked a few WEP keys in the past (purely in my own lab setups)... I have no intention of haxing with this setup.

And as for the cold air/condensaton comment, I did mention some ware in this thread that I wanted to use a temperature switch so the fan is on during hot days and off during cold, rainy, foggy days. Plus someone had a pretty good idea of coating the board as well. But the heat from the router inside of the box should be enough to keep condensation to a minimum on cold days.