lobsters's Full Review: Hawking H-AI6SIP Hi-Gain Antenna (HAI6SIP)
What Is This Thing, Anyway?
The Hawking H-AI6SIP high-gain antenna is a replacement antenna for wireless routers or access points (in other words, the broadcast station of wireless networks). By replacing the antenna, you will improve the signal power, and get better reception of your wireless signal.
This antenna is not for use with the wireless adapter cards (in other words, the "receiving end", the PC side). This point wasn't clear to me until I bought the product and opened it.
So, 2dB increased to 6dB, What is the Big Deal?
The Hawking antenna is a 6 dB antenna, while the regular ones that comes with your wireless router is 2 dB. So that is an increase of 4 dB. So, what is the big deal?
It turns out that this is in deed big deal. The unit used here is a log-based unit. To find out how much the power will be increased, you need to do this calculation: FOLD = 10^(dB/10). So, with 4 dB increase, you are looking at 10^0.4, or 2.5 FOLD. That is more that double.
So How Much (Theoretical) Improvement Should I Expect?
The antenna is 6 dB. That is 4 dB better than the antenna it replaces. Unfortunately, Hawking was too cheap to use a good cable. The cable they put on (and yes, welded, so you can't switch to a better cable) is absolutely the worst they can find. Signal loss on that cable is horrendous at 2.5 dB/meter. And since the cable was cheap, they gladly provided 2.5 feet long, which really kills the gain on the better antenna. The 2.5 feet cable will attenuate about 2 dB, leaving the power gain at only 2 dB, which is 10^0.2 = 1.58, so only 58% increase. So sad!
I hope someone at Hawking is reading this, and decide to bundle a better cable to the product!
What is in the box?
The packaging of this product is quite nice. Inside the outer box with printings all over, there is a hard cardboard white box inside. The antenna is nicely protected.
The antenna is connected to a cable. The cable is quite long, about 2.5ft. Unfortunately, the cable used here (RG3160) is quite bad, with very strong signal loss.
At the end of the cable, there is a reverse SMA plug. There is a converter to convert it to a TNC connector. If you have a Linksys router (like mine), you will find this converter very handy.
There is also a small booklet that is very informative. One complain is that the booklet is a little too small. Few details in the figures are difficult to read. But you can go to the Hawking website to download the electronic version to read it better.
Setting Up Dual-Antenna Wireless Access Point / Router
I have a Linksys WRT54G wireless router. This is quite a classic box, with 54Mbps G standard wireless, and two antennae.
I live in a 4-bedroom house. The wireless router is located in one corner of the house downstairs. So the other corner of the house, especially upstairs, receives very weak signal. As a benchmark, the upstairs computer (with a Netgear WG311v2 PCI card) only gives 3 lights (out of 8), and runs at sub-optimal speed (at 48 Mbps). After installing the Hawking antenna, the connection quality remains the same.
I found a hacked firmware called HyperWRT. In this firmware I can tweak the transmission power (which turn out to be useful). Also, I can choose which antenna to use to perform tranmission (TX) and receiving (RX). So I set it to only the right antenna (which is the Hawking) to do BOTH work. Never the less, the result was still the same. I might have seem moments of improvement, but again, I might not.
So What Went Wrong?
First of all, as we discussed, the cable connected to the antenna killed the signal by 2dB. And who knows what else went wrong. Maybe the adapter has some loss? Maybe the antenna was not as powerful as rated?
Compare to Similar Products
For my Linksys wireless router, I have the option to buy the official Linksys antenna. It comes in pairs, without cable (direct connect). The gain on the antenna is UNKNOWN. Linksys thinks customers are too stupid to understand this information. And I resent that!
Such philosophy is also evident in their firmware design. I had to use a third party hacked firmware to have better control of the Linksys box, because they think we customers should not even know there is an option.
Enough ranting on that. Also, the price difference is staggering. I bought the Hawking antenna from CompUSA for only $5 (after rebate). If I bought the Linksys, I need to pay $60. Now there is a possibility that the "official" one might work. Now that is a thought!
Also, I start to doubt if simple antenna replacement will work. A signal relay box might be much more effective. However I heard setting up is a little tricky. I think I should just be content with my 3 out of 8 signal strength, and live with that. After all, the connection speed is almost full at 48 Mbps, and occasionally does slip up to 54. Actually, if I just crank up the power by the hacked firmware, I can get to stable 54Mbps.
All the different versions
Hawking has two different versions of this product. This one, with a P at the end (for PC, I guess), has a TNC converter. The other less popular one, with an A at the end (H-AI6SIA), has an Apple Airport adapter (MCX connector). The two products are otherwise identical. There is a couple more reviews on the product listed under a different entry here. I am pretty sure they are all on the P version. So if Epinions wants to consolidate the entries, these two entries should merge.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 5 Driver Availability: Windows, Linux, and Mac
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