Archive for the 'Networking' Category

Woktenna

Here is a pic of my semi professionally made (that is I spent time in the wood shop) dish setup for my D-Link DWL-122 802.11b 11 Mbps USB Adapter:

usb-wifi-wok-dish-closeup.jpg

To develop this dish setup, I did the following:

  1. Used ideas from http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/
  2. Mostly the focal point math from http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/usbscoop.jpg
  3. Took a wok lid and removed the wooden handle
  4. Cut a small length of wood (a) (this gets the USB dongle to the calculated focal point)
  5. Cut a small block of wood (b) (this connects the dish to the camera stand)
  6. Drilled the appropriate holes into the the two pieces of wood
  7. Put a long screw into the block of wood (b) that extends through the other side (this joins the length of wood (a), dish, and block together)
  8. Embedded a nut the size of the camera stand’s butterfly bolt into the block of wood (b) and used a hardening putty to keep it there
  9. Put two thumb tacks into the length of wood (a) to hold bands around the usb dongle

The whole setup collapses in seconds, is aimable, portable, and gave me terrific gain… though I don’t have comparison screenshots. This is a great setup for a laptop on the go trying to get the distant wifi access.

usb-wifi-wok-side-by-side-cantenna-wrt54g-bridge.jpg

Here, the woktenna is seen by the Cantenna. I had the Cantenna hooked up to a wrt54g running dd-wrt as a wireless bridge to another access point.

See also:

Posted by Karl Herrick on February 10th, 2006 in Hardware, Networking, Wireless | 5 Comments »

How to make Cat 5 cable

Never done it, but doesn’t look too hard according to this website:

How to Make a Category 5 / Cat 5E Patch Cable

Posted by Karl Herrick on December 31st, 2005 in Hardware, Networking | 1 Comment »

The World of Wireless

I’ve embarked on a strange journey in computer land. The other day I decided it was time to find out what all this wireless talk was all about. 802.11g this, and WIFI that, WEP this, and WAP that! HA!

My equipment thus far is a WRT54G Linksys router… (I think this was a good buy as it has a lot of “community” backing and seems to be quite “configurable.”) and the wireless card is the WMP55AG. It supports 802.11a/b/g and I have it running on Linux… kind of.

The madwifi drivers were difficult to install, but I found someone who knew what they were doing that did it before, and they helped. Whew… where do I go from here?

Posted by Karl Herrick on April 22nd, 2004 in Networking, Wireless | No Comments »

Win95 and LAN

Wow… I am writing this on a Win95 computer I setup to do voice chat… well, I am sorry to say the Linux Yahoo Messenger client doesn’t do voice. In other news, I have dial up piped in to my Redhat 9 box, and this computer… How exciting! Anyhow, I am having trouble with the “dial up on demand” function of my router… when I request a connection it “should” connect… right now I have to go into the web administration and force a connect… definitely not the best solution. Difficulties lie ahead of me… :-( I see lots of networking in my future… oh boy!

Posted by Karl Herrick on October 22nd, 2003 in Networking, Yahoo, Telephony, VOIP, Windows, Linux | No Comments »