John D Schultz

Last week, I worked a live online auction.  The auction was held in a large 150,000 square foot u-shaped building.  There were a few locations within the building where my aircard had a heck of a time maintaining good reception.  As a solution to the problem, I upgraded my aircard to the new Compass 597.  I was instantly impressed, as my speeds soared to new heights never before reached on my other aircard.  I used the aircard on Saturday at an auction, and had very good success, and excellent response times.

At the end of last week, I was informed that an auction I’ll be doing next week was going to provide me with some challenges.  The challenge was/is there is no cellular coverage in the building.  Although, immediately out the front door, there is tremendous coverage.  At least, that’s what the coverage map seems to indicate.  My solution to this problem was a bit more creative.

I picked up a high gain booster antenna, and a Cradlepoint CTR500 EVDO Travel Router.  This allows me to do several things.  The first is to plug the antenna into my existing aircard, and increase the reception by one to two bars.  This will be important for those less than good signal moments.  The second is that the router allows me to plug the aircard directly into it.  This allows me to setup the router and aircard in an area where I have the best signal.  I then can either broadcast the signal wirelessly with the router, or use my Ethernet radios to transmit the wireless signal a long distance (60 miles direct line of sight, or through up to 10 walls).

With the upcoming auction where there is no connection inside.  I’m going to setup my travel router, aircard and antenna near an outside door.  In theory, I’ll have a good strong signal from that location.  I’m then planning on hooking the router to my Ethernet radio, and point to point broadcasting the Ethernet signal to my laptop which will be hooked to my other Ethernet radio.  It may sound like a cumbersome arrangement, but I’m hopeful this arrangement will allow me to increase the effectiveness of my wireless setup in those locations where signals are hard to come by.