Hi all

(picture link at the bottom)

I just worked through a little project because I felt the built in antennas on the MiniPCI card really sucked. I have my enterprise access point DWL-8200AP just 5 meters away behind a non metal or concrete wall. Most of the time I had a negotiated speed on 54 Mbit on the DM8000 WiFi. But it was really fluctuating as the link quality was very poor. It seems the DM alone is responsible for that poor quality as two different laptops places on top of the DM8000 had way better link quality with the laptops built in antennas (logged Wifi quality over 24 hours)... Sometimes the speed in the DM8000 could negotiate down to 6 Mbit which makes HD out on the web streaming impossible… As it seems the cache features in the web streaming seems not optimal (should be bigger) and could freeze even if the speed goes low for just a second or so I had to do something. Viewing movies over CIFS shares from the DM8000 seems more robust and wont freeze the same way.

I could not easily use a UTP cable and therefor chosed to instead increase the WiFI stability in the DM8000 with external antennas.

The antenna cables used was art no: 1561 from mhzshop.com "Pigtail UFL vers RP-SMA-Jack 40 cm en coaxial Ø 1.8mm". These were V E R Y hard to find as the usual max length for this type of cable is 12 inches which is a few centimers to short on the left side inside the DM8000. However… Carsten Stuebinger at the German site wimo.com said he could fix cables as well. Note that these cables cannot easily be created at home. This as there seems to exist no hand tools for the small U.F.L/IPEX connector.

Note picture 119 where I left the old antenna cables in the chassis with some plastic tubing.

The result was to my satisfaction with a much more stable and better WiFi.

All pictures here:
incedo.eu/~sjoholmp/misc_internet_links/wifi_antenna_DM8000/


[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.incedo.eu/~sjoholmp/misc_internet_links/wifi_antenna_DM8000/cables-IMG_0106.JPG]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.incedo.eu/~sjoholmp/misc_internet_links/wifi_antenna_DM8000/cables-IMG_0107.JPG]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.incedo.eu/~sjoholmp/misc_internet_links/wifi_antenna_DM8000/cables-IMG_0108.JPG]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.incedo.eu/~sjoholmp/misc_internet_links/wifi_antenna_DM8000/inside_after_modification-IMG_0115.JPG]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.incedo.eu/~sjoholmp/misc_internet_links/wifi_antenna_DM8000/inside_after_modification-IMG_0116.JPG]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.incedo.eu/~sjoholmp/misc_internet_links/wifi_antenna_DM8000/inside_after_modification-IMG_0117.JPG]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.incedo.eu/~sjoholmp/misc_internet_links/wifi_antenna_DM8000/inside_after_modification-IMG_0119.JPG]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.incedo.eu/~sjoholmp/misc_internet_links/wifi_antenna_DM8000/inside_after_modification-IMG_0121.JPG]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.incedo.eu/~sjoholmp/misc_internet_links/wifi_antenna_DM8000/inside_before_modification-IMG_0112.JPG]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.incedo.eu/~sjoholmp/misc_internet_links/wifi_antenna_DM8000/inside_before_modification-IMG_0113.JPG]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.incedo.eu/~sjoholmp/misc_internet_links/wifi_antenna_DM8000/inside_before_modification-IMG_0114.JPG]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.incedo.eu/~sjoholmp/misc_internet_links/wifi_antenna_DM8000/outside_after_modification-IMG_0125.JPG]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.incedo.eu/~sjoholmp/misc_internet_links/wifi_antenna_DM8000/outside_after_modification-IMG_0142.JPG]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.incedo.eu/~sjoholmp/misc_internet_links/wifi_antenna_DM8000/outside_after_modification-IMG_0144.JPG]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.incedo.eu/~sjoholmp/misc_internet_links/wifi_antenna_DM8000/outside_after_modification-IMG_0149.JPG]