On Wed, 18 Dec 2013 06:43:07 -0800, William Sommerwerck wrote:

In general, the more-expensive routers have higher output.

Hi Dave,

I disagree.

My contention is that the pro radios I'm using are just about the same
price as a high-end consumer router - yet - their power is tremendously higher
in the pro equipment (which is designed to be cheap & powerful).

To make matters worse, it's actually pretty hard to walk into Fryes to
pick out a home broadband router, and to find the antenna and transmitter
gain listed on the box. I've tried, It's damn near impossible.

You know why?

I don't; but, I suspect it's because they're all very weak (probably around
15 to 18dBm with something like 3 to 6 dBi antennas).

So, I agree with you that, to get higher-gain consumer routers, you're going
to pay through the nose, simply because it's really hard to shop intelligently.

Luckily, the gain figures are all published for the pro equipment, since
gain is almost everything when your access point is twenty miles away.

So, my key contention, which is not intuitive, is that the pro equipment
is actually just about the same price as the consumer equipment, but, it's
vastly more powerful.

Take, for example, this $70 MIMO 802.11n access point which you wire to your
modem (or to your router or to a switch):
http://www.wlanparts.com/product/UAP...FeZ7Qgod3k4Aew

It will knock the pants off anything I can find at Fryes at the same price.


Here's the datasheet:
http://dl.ubnt.com/datasheets/unifi/UniFi-AP-DS.pdf

I challenge someone to find a more powerful consumer radio in the same price range!
Note: The UAP-LR is 27dBm + 3dBi = 30dBm (1 Watt)

PS: No, I don't work for Ubiquiti - although I wish I did.