Repeter??

I bought my mother a laptop for xmas. She live's next door to us. Someone told me that she may be able to use our internet con. We have a router hooked up, so i took the laptop up to her house to see if i could pickup a connection, no luck. Someone else told me that i could buy a repeter and that might boost the signal enough that she could pick it up. Any thought's about this? If so what is a good repeter to buy and where?

For my Linksys WRT54GS Router, I was able to buy optional, more powerful antennas. I can get internet connection anywhere on my property. Just remember to create an SSID that is password protected, so your neighbors don't use your router too

How far away is your mom's house and what is between your house and hers (trees, shrubs, garage's, etc) ? You may be able to move your wireless router to a location closer to her house to make it work. Maybe next to a second floor window in your house that faces her house. Were you able to connect her laptop to your wireless router while in your house? And if so, try walking from your house to hers to see where you lose the signal.

Usually a larger antenna helps if not too far away, 100 feet is about normal for standard antenna as long there is nothing in the way.

Here some info to check your current router.
http://www.wikihow.com/Boost-a-Router-Signal

heres another option
http://www.amazon.com/Booster-Antenna-L ... gy_e_img_c

If you have a clear shot from a window to a window...
It can be done...
The distance will determine what you need to buy...
An inexpensive directional antenna should do the trick if the distance is fairly short, say under 75 feet...
After that you may need to get a more expensive directional antenna...
You can go several miles point to point if you have enough height and watts on the antennas...
What you want to do from a technical point is to create a 'wireless bridge'...
You will need two devices to anchor that bridge, one at each house...
You can then put a 'wireless access point' in your mom's house...
That will allow her to wander about the house and have wireless like normal...
If you just point a directional antenna at the window her roaming distance will be limited...

I've got a Lions Club friend that shares a cable modem Internet connection with his son. The son's house is near the public road with ready access to the cable companies line. The father's house is about a 1/2 mile in on the farm. Much to far to pay for a cable run. There are directional antennas and unlicensed class RF transceivers at each end. Performance is excellent with full speed connections over the RF link.

Morning All, Just now tried this. I took the laptop up to my mothers house ( about 300 feet from me ) and could not pick up my signal from my router ( i have a linksys ) But i did pick up another connection from a netscape ( if i remember correctly that was the conn. i had ) Am i picking up the con. from some other router? ( maybe the neighbers? ) Is this ok to do or should i keep trying to get my router to signal up there? Would it be best that we get her own connection for the internet? I know very little about this stuff and would really apperciate any advice you can give me. We had a good con. from somewhere else, i had all 5 bars light up ( I guess that shows the signal strength ) Also my sister lives right down the road from us and i know they have a laptop with a router, maybe we were picking up her internet. How can i verify this? Would the name of her router give me a clue? Like i said earlier i have a linksys router and i tried to connect to it but no go, then this other ( Netscape? ) came up and i connected to it very good Is this good or bad? Can we just use this connection?

Either a neighbors router or maybe a WIFI Hotspot in your area? Some areas have free hot spots for internet....

I get 3 or 4 wireless connections around my house, but all are SECURE connections, so I can't connect.

Thank You for the response, would it be ok to use this con.? It may be my sister's. Is there anyway i can find out? If it is someone other's would it hurt to use it?

Netscape is browser, Netgear is probably what you're seeing because the default router name is usually the company name.

The way to find out is have your sister go into the control panel for the router and name the router. While shes at it have her secure it to prevent someone from accessing it. For example, some mischievous kid could lock you out of it and it would require hard reset, not really a big deal but that is probably the lest of your worries. If she has sicko neighbor who uses it to download some child porn that is going to come back to her.

If the router is not your sisters its illegal and a felony in some states to access it. This is one of those crimes rarely prosecuted.

You can try this with the antennae, won't cost you anything and it does work:

http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/