Product Reviews

Most wireless routers and wireless adaptors come with low-powered antennas, which are often the cause of poor signal range. If you need to improve your reception, upgrading the antenna to a high-powered one such as D-Link's ANT24-0700 can make the world of difference.

Most routers and adaptors have 2dBi antennas, so this 7dBi model is a lot more powerful. To use it, you'll need a router or network adaptor with RP-SMA or RP-TNC connectors (check your manual for details). It will also work only with 2.4GHz networks, including 802.11b, 802.11g and most 802.11n WiFi networks.

Where you use the antenna depends on your problem. Upgrading the router makes sense if you've got multiple computers

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with poor reception. Upgrading an adaptor makes more sense if you've got one computer that's suffering. In both cases, remember that you are going to need to replace all existing antennas, so it can be expensive for MIMO or dual-antenna products.

We upgraded our bog-standard 802.11g single-antenna reference wireless router. This isn't a bad router, but we could only get a signal from it at 1m and 15m (not 25m) using its standard antenna. Installing the ANT24-0700 didn't make a difference to throughputs at 1m or 15m, but we were able to get throughputs of 4.07Mbit/s at 25m when using our Centrino notebook. This is enough for decent web browsing, and it could turn a PC with a stuttering connection into a usable one.

This antenna can connect directly to a router or adaptor, or it can be fitted to its stand. This gives you a wider range of positioning options, including wall mounting or using its magnetic feet to 'stick' it to a metal surface.

It's expensive, though. If you have more than one antenna to replace then you should go for a better router, such as Linksys's WAG325N Wireless-N ADSL Gateway. Otherwise, Hawking's 7dBi antenna (£25 from www.maplin.co.uk) has similar performance and is cheaper.