Experiments

1. 23-Oct-2001
2 Lucent Orinoco cards, one with a helical antenna and one with the normal built-in antenna.

Worked very well, 10Mbps up to distance of about 20-30 feet through several walls. We were in a tower block at the time, so the steel-reinforced concrete all around probably didn't do us any favours. The helical antenna definitely improved the signal.

2. 23-Oct-2001
2 Lucent Orinoco cards, one with a helical antenna and one with a pringles-can antenna.

Similar results to 1. with the additional result of 1Mbps vertically through 2 floors. (again, steel-reinforced concrete definitely didn't help)

3. 23-Oct-2001
2 Lucent Orinoco cards, outdoors, various antennae.

This is where the fun really started. Tom's laptop battery was flat when we got out into Regency Square to test the range of the antennae. Fortunately, there just happens to be a coke machine with a standard 3-pin plug on the stairwell down to Regency Square car park, so Tom plugged in his laptop, perched on the top of the Coke machine, booted up and held the antenna. He looked cool. :)

With pringles-can pointed at the helical antenna, we got a good (enough for 11Mbps) signal strength up to at least 100m away. We probably could have got more if we'd tried harder.

With two pringles-cans pointed at each other, we walked almost the whole length of Regency Square (150-200m?), and they still showed virtually no drop in signal strength! They will go *much* further, and the test showed that they definitely do work well under line-of-sight conditions.

4. 19-Dec-2001
2 Lucent Orinoco cards on laptops, outdoors, 2 pringles directional antennae.

Connection held up well to about 200 yds, then degraded until 300 yds when line of sight was obscured by some trees and a small building. Stopped by campus security, who were rather impressed and let us carry on. :)