Ok, so I need wireless access between two buildings so I bought a wireless router with a detachable antenna and replaced it with a major antenna. It's supposed to be an extremely strong signal which will reach over 1km. I attached it to the router and it seems to be working, however I'm not getting the signal I should be getting. Right now I'm about 100 feet away from the antenna and the signal is barely being picked up. It has one bar at it's best. That's kind of ridiculous. The antenna is even outside and currently the only thing between my laptop and the antenna is one layer of glass. Why is this thing not working the way it's supposed to? Could it be the router? Do I need to change some settings or something? The router is a 'D-Link 54g RTR WBR-1310 Wireless-G 54Mbps Router'.

Hi roryt2000,
Apologies in the delay in replying to you.
We have a staff of techs who have a wide variety of skills and will be able to help you with your problem, this is not my area of expertise, one of the folks who can help you should be along shortly.
Thank you
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Ok, thank you.

I'd really appreciate any input from anyone becaue this is still a major problem for me and it's affecting my business now so I really need to get it figured out. I was hoping someone here could help so I didn't have to pay someone to fix it, but we'll see.

Hi Rory .

Are the buildings right next to each other? Do you have the option of burying a cable? If you do, I would recommend burying a 100 or 1000 Mbps backbone cable in some thin PVC piping. On the end with the first wireless router, plug it into one of the RJ-45 ports. On the end with the other building, put a wireless access point. This will provide wireless connectivity to the other building without having to worry about boosting the signal strength to possibly illegal levels.

If this isn't an option, keep reading. If you like the above option though, you can stop here.
While an antenna is a big part of how far a signal is broadcast, it is not the only factor. You may have a giant antenna, but you will still need to boost the signal power in order to receive a strong signal. Some firmware will allow this and other won't. You may need to look into alternative firmware.

First, however, I would check for anything that could be degrading your signal strength. Cordless phones, microwaves (even when off), metal objects (they deflect signals like you wouldn't believe), walls (brick dampens signal), etc. If it transmits a wireless signal try to eliminate it (at least for the duration of our testing). If it's metallic, eliminate it for the duration of our testing. This should help us diagnose your problem further.

I can't bury anything, it's a completely cement business area. I'm not allowed to run cords either.

I think the problem may be the router, I'm not sure how I'd go about boosting the signal with that though. The antenna has nothing blocking the signal, it goes straight into my office with only a single piece of glass in front of it.