I am scowering the internet for literature or tutorials for installing the 3rd antenna (Wireless N) on a 2 antenna laptop. I am running the Intel 4965AGN card now and have already placed the 3rd antenna below the top cover just to the right of the mouse pad with all of the excess wire spooled up in the wifi bay underneath, but unless I am within 20 feet of an AP, I only get 2 or 3 bars @ 11Mbps, and I know this card can do better. Do any of you very knowledgeable people have a better placement for your 3rd antenna to maximize signal quality and strength from a fair distance with walls in between?
yeh, you feed the cable to the back of the display and stick it to the back of the screen with the sticky pad provided, you should find the other 2 antennas there also, but the card is quite poo, I got one on fle bay for £5 delivered and it is not much better than the g spec I used to have.
When I ordered it, it was on the compatibility list and also on Tamos's Commview For Wifi list to be compatible for Aircrack-ng. I come to find that it wax not on this PC's while list nor does it do packet injection. Thankfully through MDL, I was able to remove the whitelist, but I'm still kinda screwed on the packet injection end. I will soon be looking to upgrade (AGAIN) for a card that runs well in both Windows and also Backtrack/Linux, and performs packet injection for PenTesting networks. If you know of any off the top of your head, please make a suggestion. On the primary note, you are saying that you get a stronger signal will all 3 mounted behind the display? Wasn't looking to go back there again, but I definitely will if it imporve signal qualities because I could use that array with any other cards I get. P.S. i am a fan of your work on TPB
What is the polarity of the antennas at the access point? if the antennas are vertical (most access points are, as people just flip the antenna up), you will get a much crappier signal if the antennas are horizontal on your laptop (such as in the main case). The strength also depends on the obstacles between you and the AP. If there's brick walls, trees etc you will obviously get a worse signal that there would be in you had a direct line of sight. Not being able to have a movable antenna on a laptop is a big downside, as positioning can make the different between a 11MBPS connection and a say a 135MBPS connection. There as also two types of N adaptors, ones which are single channel and ones which are dual channel (a more correct definition of an 'N' adaptor). Single channel gives you 150Mbps max, and dual gives you 300Mbps (note bits, not bytes) connection max. In reality, the actual speed you achieve wil be less, and using 'bits' instead of 'bytes' is more of a marketing con to make it soumd better than it really is. In reality, 150Mbps is 18.75MB/s, and 300Mbps is 37.5MB/s. Then there's the issue that these figures are a little hopeful! In reality, the real speeds are much less. This also applies to the internet, with a 8Mbps connection really only giving you a maximum of 1MB/s, and even then thats hopeful - more like say, 700KB/s. The wireless speed cutback is usually a lot more than hardwired, so even with a 300Mbps really good connection, and a really good infeed on the other side (the AP can only send you the data as quick as it receives it!), you may only end up getting a few MB/s! Then, if you are using a USB dongle, there's the consideration of the USB. USB 2.0 claims a maximum of 480Mbps (again, that marketing...), which is really only 60MB/s. Thing is, USB 2.0 only allows unidirectional communication at any one time, and bidirectional communication is required to send and receive data (acknowledgement packets etc). This means USB 2.0 maxes out at just over 30MB/s as many people have found with external drives. Also, ports on a computer are usually tied to a single hub, or shared amongst a couple ol hubs on the computer. The 480Mbps bandwidth is shared amongst those ports sharing that hub. If you have an old (or crappy) USB 1.1 device (12 Mbps) or worse, a USB 1.0 device (2 Mbps), the hub will run at that speed and so will anything else plugged into another port that uses the same hub! This is one of the things with USB 3.0. Most people for a long time won't be able to make use of USB 3.0 even if they have a USB 3.0 computer and device, because for USB 3.0 speeds, you need no USB 2.0/1.1/1.0 plugged into the same hub (remember, computer USB ports are usually share hubs), you need a USB 3.0 cable. If you use a standard USB 2.0 cable, the device, and any other devices plugged into the same hub that are also USB 3.0, will only run at USB 2.0 speeds. Although a bit off topic, I pointed the above out because everything stated is in ideal conditions. Since in real life this isn't likely, you won't get full connection speed. Even if you do, as soon as you try and transmit a heavy load of data the connection speed will most likely drop Different chipsets for wireless can give you a very different response in terms of connection speed in Mbps, and also in actual MB/s possible.