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What I WISH I was Packing

Posted on August 17, 2007

Way back when, what right now seems like an eternity ago, I wrote a post titled What I’m Packing. There’s one thing that would have been unbelievably useful this whole trip - a high-gain directional antenna for WiFi reception. (Mum etc. just stop reading now.)

We’ve been in three places now where there is WiFi but it’s limited to the lobby or some other area in the hotel. In one case we were able to move the router slightly so we could get reception in our room, but in the other two cases (right now included) we haven’t had access to the router. We do however have a signal literally meters outside of our room.

The sad thing is, I almost took the key piece of equipment - my little USB 802.11b stick. Everything else I need could have been purchased on the trip (a USB extension cable, and one of those spider things that are used in Asian cookery for fishing spring rolls out of the deep frier.) Here’s a how-to:

http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/

What would be even cooler would be a portable WiFi repeater, with one high-gain directional antenna and a regular antenna. That way I could set up the repeater in our room, with the high gain antenna oriented toward the hotel’s router, and it would give me wireless in our room. The only thing similar that I’ve seen is the wireless distribution service, or WDS, and for that you need to flash the firmware on the main router, which is obviously not an option when in a hotel.

So that, and a powerful battery powered fan that sticks to the ceiling, for when the power goes out at night (which it does, quite often.)

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