It all started In a cheesy motel in St.Charles, IL. There was WiFi in the hall but not in the room. On first impulse I bought a Hawking WiFi USB dish. The geek factor is surely high, it just looks rad, but it's not really transportable -- they admit this on the product page, though.
Following this, I was eyeing a very powerful USB adapter with a "stick" like antenna, the Alfa 500mW but I have not jumped on it this time.
In Bad Endorf, there was a WiFi router on the corridor just in front of my room (and yet there was no WiFi, but that's not relevant). It had no cable plugged in... I thought, hm, don't repeaters need two radios / antennas? I looked into the subject and realized that no, they can receive frames and retransmit them, reducing possible throughput. However, typical hotels and even rented apartments do not provide enough bandwidth anyways that would strain any router, not even the 802.11b ones, much less a 802.11g.
So, repeater. I was looking into various devices designed to travel with. Linksys travel router looks decent, however it's severely limited not having an external antenna. D-Link has a pocket access point which can serve many roles. It does not list repeater, but I am not fazed by that, OpenWRT/DD-WRT can solve that if they run and i want the device. But no, there is no antenna either. I was searching for long... and then...
Note: you might say "but, the antenna will break in my bag" and I say "we want a threaded connector, so we can remove / insert the antenna easily and securely". Thanks god, most common connectors on routers are threaded.
After looking around a lot, I have found a very interesting product: the Meraki Mini which is usually used to build community networks. However, it's perfect for us: it's small, so small you can suction cup it on a window (or a hotel door...). It runs OpenWRT which can be configured into a repeater or a bridge, see the links for difference.
Of course, we are not yet done! What if the signal is really weak? I went to eBay and bought a bigger antenna and a very small amplifier which can be installed right on the antenna connector.
The Meraki Minis (I bought two), their supplementary antennas and one amplifier (that thing is expensive) is on their way. I will tell you about my experience with them.
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