Or at least Amped Wireless says it can, with their new SR600EX Pro Smart Repeater, boasting a 600mW they say pushes your range up by 1.5 miles (2.4km). So, yeah, you should be able to hit that corner of the kitchen that’s usually down to one bar.
But, more importantly, the Amped repeater could turn your entire neighbourhood into a wireless hotspot. Think about it: stick the repeater in your apartment. If it works as advertised (an if we haven’t been able to check yet, mind you), you’ll now have sweet, golden radio spectrum dripping down you chin all over the place. At the park. Outside. On the footpath. In your favourite cafes and bars. You can get work done in a whole new slew of places with the same security you’d have at home. Not bad at all for $US180. [Amped via Engadget]
5432
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 8:06 AMI wonder if this carries any additional risk of cancer.
Andre
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 8:34 AMProbably gives you a permanent tan.
Chris
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 8:38 AMis it wrong i want one just to boost the output a stupid amount and see if the local Indian Myna population mysteriously starts bursting into flames…
Ben Zemm
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 9:00 AMI had a few 4+km wifi links in 2003-2005, at the height of the mesh communities. Of course both ends of each link had fixed, directional antennas, so maybe not as useful as TFA implies. But full speed 802.11b was sweet! Back in the day.
Morkai
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 2:31 PM“802.11B”
woohoo! now I can download that 500kb Jpeg in under 10 minutes! :P
warcroft
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 9:19 AMVery interesting.
Definitely want to see some actual usage/performance reviews.
Awnshegh
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 9:40 AMHmmm. Just sounds like another way to super saturate the already stressed 2.4GHz band.
Stew
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 11:00 AMIt might broadcast at a stupidly high power, but I doubt your mobile device is powerful enough to broadcast back to it.
Even if it can somehow pick up your phone’s signal from that far away, the amount of gain applied needed to interpret the signal combined with distortion from the atmosphere & buildings would make it uninterpretable.
I’m no expert, but the only way I see this working is to have one repeater at your home and another at your destination. At that level of effort, you may as well use phone’s mobile data or your destination’s own wifi connection.
/buzz killington signing off
Mike
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 3:33 PMThis guy. Is right.
JM
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 11:38 AMInteresting. I have used 10km directional antennas for about 3 years but an omni directional would be quite useful. The price is not surprising as antennas (except for those bought at retail shops) are quite cheap anyway.
Matt L
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 12:41 PMSo my laptop would be able to hear it, but it won’t be able to hear my laptop because it’s antenna aint that strong!
Blake
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 1:05 PMYeah, this was my thought as well.
The Saint
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 2:22 PMMore info please Gizmodo.
The Saint
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 2:28 PMNote:
From the webpage.
To achieve wireless range of up to 1.5 miles, it is necessary to use Amped Wireless Pro Series products together with line of sight: Pro Smart Repeater, Pro Access Point and/or Pro USB Adapter.
So looks like 2 devices needed, RX and TX
Matt L
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 10:18 AMTechnically… Both devices will RX and TX
The Saint
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 1:53 PMYes they will.