[MLB-WIRELESS] Silly question

[Dan Flett]

>My AP (Asus WL-500g) running OpenWRT sits on a high shelf in a  cupboard. I 
>don't seem to be getting particularly good coverage, and  I think this is 
>partially due to the height difference between the AP  and clients, so I 
>was thinking of getting an omni on a short lead.  Doing it neatly and 
>minimising the cable length means I'd be  attaching the omni to the 
>underside of the shelf the AP sits on,  which means the omni would be 
>upside down.
>
>My question therefore, is there some kind of polarisation in 802.11g  
>that'll make this not work properly?

It'll work fine.  A 180 degree turn on a vertial antenna means it's still 
vertically polarised.  And a low-gain omni will have a very broad beamwidth, 
so being upside down will have almost no effect on the pick-up pattern.  
I've done this myself once with one of those small mag-mount omnis and it 
worked nicely.

Being in a cupboard isn't a really good place for an antenna though - this 
is probably causing more of an issue than the height problem - unless the 
cupboard is on the 3rd storey of a house and the clients are on the ground 
floor.  A dipole omni's weakest point of pick-up is directly above and below 
it, but so long as you're more not located in those positions you shouldn't 
have a problem.

Dan