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calendar   Tuesday - June 30, 2020

My Big Digital Day

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Asus PCE-AC88 Wifi adapter with remote 4 channel antenna. Oh baby it rocks!




UPDATE: HORRY CLAP what a difference!!!!
Installation was super easy. Put card in slot in PC, close cover, attach antenna, run the install CD. Instant improvement. Take a look at the settings, notice that the PC now has Wifi and Wifi2, turn Wifi off and Wifi2 on, and this sets the ASUS adapter as the default in the 5Ghz bandwidth. Signal is now at maximum strength, and internet speeds are insane. The Win 10 available networks thing is showing me 10 more networks than before; not mine, but that’s how good the antenna is. The graphics heavy blog Feral Irishman loads in an quarter second, FoxNews loads instantly.

I am a happy camper.  LOL  LOL  LOL  LOL  LOL


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ok, all the bits and pieces have finally arrived, so I can attack the WiFi situation here.

It’s not a hard thing to do, but there are several steps that will turn into more effort than I’d like to do.

But first I have to go to the grocery store and get some cat kibble. We ran out last night, and heaven forbid that our two little carpet queens would have no choices for breakfast. They’ve already got some well moistened canned stuff, with some crushed Dr. Marty’s raw dried kibbs mixed in. But no, they want the hard crunchy bits. So they’re wrapping themselves around my legs, giving me the pathetic kitteh stink eye. So I have to hit the store.

After that I can get around to doing my own project. We live in a 3 level condo on the ground floor, built on concrete slab foundation. The place was built in the late ‘70s, so it doesn’t have a ton of power outlets, phone outlets, and cable outlets. The Wifi modem thing from Xfinity needs all three, because we have the “triple play” package that provides internet, cable TV, and landline telephone. The only place in the house that has those three outlets close together is the small bedroom upstairs. The only place we can fit the PC desk is downstairs. So the Wifi signal has to pass through 2 concrete slabs and through 4 walls to get to my PC. So it’s no wonder I only get a 1 bar signal strength. Worse, this cheapo new PC I bought has a built=in Wifi that only works on the 2.4Ghz bandwidth, which is the slow narrow one that is totally overburdened in my building. The newer 5Ghz band is much faster, much wider, and is used less here. At least that’s what the Wifi Analyzer app shows me.

So I figured a two prong solution would work best. First, move the modem as close as possible, and get some kind of high end Wifi card for the PC that can use the 5Ghz band. So I got a big long phone wire, an equally long RG6 coax cable with 4 layer shielding, a bunch of cable connectors both straight and 90 degrees. Then I found a top rated high speed adapter that has a remote four phase antenna. This will let me raise the antenna off the floor down here to about the same level as the modem upstairs, giving me a straight signal path that doesn’t have to go through concrete. Plus super strong antennas. Naturally, the wires on the adapter aren’t quite long enough, and they use the rare mini coax cable that’s not commonly available, so I’m SOL for making my own 4 channel extension cord from standard coax cable. Instead, I have to rearrange things so I can get the PC several feet off the floor, so I can put the antenna up on the bookcase here. I only need to get it up to shoulder height, which I think I can do by putting the printer table on the other side of the PC desk, putting my old PC case on that, and then the new PC on top of that. Because I can’t raise it up too far, because the keyboard, monitor, and mouse wires have to reach the desk. So a simple job of laying a couple of wires will turn into a couple hours of moving furniture and everything else around, plus the time spent installing the card and messing about with the setup. Nothing is ever easy, and everything is always an unexpected cascade of other crap you have to do first before you can do what you want.

And if all that doesn’t do it, I also picked up a 50 foot long Cat 8 network cable, so I can temporarily hardwire the PC to the damn modem. That will absolutely give me maximum connectivity speed, but I’ll have a wire running across the floors of the entire condo. Not an elegant solution, or even a particularly safe one with that kind of tripping hazard. Use it when I’m here all alone, and hope the kittehs don’t think it’s some kind of snake toy to play with and chew on.

Or I could just go buy a house with big bedrooms and loads of outlets so I could put the modem right next to my PC. That’ll do it. And I thought this approach was an expensive one!

Right. Must get kibble. Now. Or else. 


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/30/2020 at 08:18 AM   
Filed Under: • Computers and CyberspaceDaily Life •  
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