Can a LAN card be fitted w\an antenna thru the r45 to receive wifi from router?

Question

i have notebook pc card for ethernet connect. i also have comps with built in ethernet(wired con)i know that buying a wi fi adapter is the way to go,but i am curious if an antenna alone or with any other jerry rig is feasable?i often choose the hard way to do simple tasks

Answer 1

Why would you think a 10Mb wired interface would accept a 50MHz encoded radio signal?

Building an interface yourself would be like trying to interface a gas stove to a wall power line... just not worth the effort.

Answer 2

Interesting... to try in a lab. Let's see the details.

As far as I know, connecting an antenna to an RJ-45 Ethernet port of a PC/laptop won't work. Why?

  

  * The antenna alone doesn't include the transmitter/receiver to process the electrical signals to send/receive.

  * An Ethernet card inside a PC won't do the trick (the processing) because it expects a coded signal for Ethernet (IEEE 802.3... specification) from the cable/connector. If you "somehow" connect the antenna to the RJ-45 port, it will receive weak electrical signals that are supposed to be processed by a WLAN chip, which uses a different specification (IEEE 802.11...), so they (LAN card + antenna) won't understand each other.

You'd still need WLAN ("Wi-Fi") circuitry with the antenna, so it would become an "external adapter".

So your "external adapter and antenna" would be a... complete WLAN adapter that you'd have to connect directly to the computer's bus, not the RJ-45 Ethernet port.

If you still want to build an "external adapter with antenna" to connect directly to the Ethernet port, then that adapter would be either (a) an access point that works in client mode or (b) an access point that works in bridge mode. Either of them would work.

Answer 3

No it's not. And even if it were possible the pricetag

for an extra antenna and the adapter would probably

exceed the pricetag for a standard pccard adapter.