Radio Card Connector [Archive] - Valemount Networks Support Forums

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paulmacp

11-28-2002, 08:07 PM

I have a Orinoco silver and am wondering what connector and the best way to shield the attached antenna on the card.. ? Thanks

lonnie

11-28-2002, 11:14 PM

Are you real good with a soldering iron? Do you have access to a desoldering system?

If you have these things then you can actually remove the internal antenna and with a steady hand you can make your own pigtails. I have to get the connector info from the office, tomorrow. It makes the pigtail cheaper, but you have a lot more work to do and nobody to blame but yourself if the connector is a dud.

paulmacp

11-29-2002, 01:26 AM

Hi Lonnie

I would appreciate that info.... to disco the ant. would be best anyway.. no leakage. Soldering iron and garden tools on standby...

Thanks

bobbyc

11-29-2002, 10:55 AM

Our experience:
orinoco with silver: average noise floor in clean environment -94. After antennas removed, -99. Signal level roughly the same.

agere w/out integrated antenna: average noise floor -97, and the signal level output is about 5dB higher than orinoco silver. Our RF expert (self proclaimed) gave this analogy. Think of the pigtail connector as a hose, and the signal ommited the water. The orinoco silver has the circuitry on the card for the built in antennas. Think of these as holes in your hose. The agere OEM card has no holes, so all the water makes it to the output (pigtail.)
Makes sense to me.
Keep in mind that we didn't do any soldering on the orinoco silver, we just cracked open the top plastic cover and cut off the antenna wafers.
Bob C

lonnie

11-29-2002, 12:39 PM

Connectors for the Lucent cards are RMC-6010-B from RF Industries.

We unsolder the antenna from the circuit board, but as another post says you can certainly clip the metal tabs as they go into the circuit board.

bobbyc

11-29-2002, 01:31 PM

Furthermore, we use our modded orinoco silver cards on our APs with amps, and the OEM cards at our unamped APs. Everybit of Signal matters on our unamped towers.
Bob C

paulmacp

11-29-2002, 04:41 PM

Thanks.. :D

dkii

11-30-2002, 04:57 PM

wouldn't the best way be to cut the trace as it leaves the side of the connector, removing as much of it as possible to prevent leakeage, since just removing the antennas still leaves the copper on the board to radiate? Does anyone know how the connectors on the cards work? how to they 'turn off' the internal antenna when the external is connected? I couldn't see any type of mechanical switch in there.

bobbyc

12-02-2002, 09:47 AM

Edit to my first post in this thread:
A orinoco still with it's internal antennas will produce a nice noise floor of -98 to -100. Must vary card by card, since I am using this mentioned orinoco right now with pigtail attached in my win98 laptop at my new house, 7.5 miles from the tower.
Specs:
Station: SNR 28 (-72/-100) (25' lmr-400, 19dB panel antenna)
Partner: SNR 11 (-74/-85) (OEM agere card, ~125' LMR-400, YDI mast mounted amp, radiowaves 13dB horizontal sector.)
This particular tower has a tower right next to it with a older WMUX Tsunami running circular polarization. It is a 4 mile link the local power company has. Our sector antenna gets local noise and also points right at their antenna at their headquarters 4 miles away. Huge dishes, 4' on each end. We think they're overpowered, got to look into that or negotiate something. We get lost packets during business hours.

ibholst

12-06-2002, 02:23 PM

We'd be willing to pay someone for their time to write detailed instructions with some kind of sketches detailing both the "clip" method and "desoldering" method of removing the internal antenna from the Lucent Silver cards.

Also, where is the source for the OEM card with no internal antenna and is there much difference in cost?

Ira
ira@microwavedsl.com

bairdc

12-07-2002, 11:50 PM

Also, where is the source for the OEM card with no internal antenna and is there much difference in cost?

YDI. They call them "Agere short cards". They come with two connectors. One is an rx/tx connector, and the other is a diversity rx connector. The rx/tx is in the center of the card. The diversity connector is off to one side.

It's been a while since I ordered one, but I think they were around $99.

BTW, in case you're thinking this will get rid of any signal emanating directly from the card, think again... They still leak signal, even with no external antenna. Therefore, if you're planning on putting two of these cards in the same box (or even in the same building) and on the same channels, you'd probably better find another way of shielding them. The best method I ever found was metal duct tape. I tried this on a regular orinoco card with the antenna clipped. I was only able to eliminate the signal coming from the card by wrapping the heck out of it with tape. I had to cover *all* of the black part of the card. Even, then, however, if I placed a laptop with an orinoco card right next to the card with the taped up antenna, it would pick up a very small amount of signal (1 or 2 on the SNR meter). Has anyone actually used two cards on the same channel in the same box with any success at eliminating crosstalk between the cards?

Craig

Craig

ibholst

12-09-2002, 12:46 PM

dkii

12-09-2002, 12:49 PM

just FYI, I wouldn't bank anything on WEP, as far as I'm concerned it's pretty much useless. I know this is not new info, but I didn't know it was this insecure. See report from AT&T Labs, its a little technical, but if you scroll to the bottom, you get the bottom line. http://www.cs.rice.edu/~astubble/wep/wep_attack.pdf

tony

12-09-2002, 01:25 PM

Not using WEP yet, but thought it was a good question to ask if using Gold at APs and Silver at CPEs. Can anyone confirm this is correct?

The Gold and Silver cards are WEP compatible, as long as you stick to 64-bit WEP on the Gold.

Thanks!

georgew

12-09-2002, 09:36 PM

Wep may be useless, but the wep plus that the Lucent cards have is immune to the wep hack, as long as you are talking to other lucent cards with current firmware.

If you are going to use wep, you should probably use ORiNOCO gold cards everywhere.

George

dkii

12-09-2002, 09:37 PM

really? I did not know that. Thanks!

georgew

12-09-2002, 09:47 PM

Wep plus will keep intruders out of your network, but unless we get per-mac wep keys, wep will not keep users from sniffing each other's traffic.

George

paulmacp

12-10-2002, 12:19 AM

Hello

Did this thread go sideways or what.. It was regarding a connector and how best to keep those little waves going in the right direction...
WEP... Why ?? from tests I have done it cuts the throughput in half and can be hacked and I am sure even the Orinocooo WEP as well. The first step in security would be MAC filtering at the Station router level to keep others off. As far as sniffing there are many NIS packages out there where you can set alerts for sniffers and tracing ( a lot of work though..).
Local sniffing from someone just out side is possible but anything secure will be 128 anyway. The user should be more afraid of there data after it leaves the local network anyway. I always recommend to a end user that if you are concerned use the many forms of encryption available to cross the entire net. Cable / DSL have many hacks and be done from the comfort of your home... Security is a big issue regardless of how you connect.. Seems to me a proper thread s/b started addressing this so it can be found by all. My POV

rbolduc

12-10-2002, 08:25 AM

Back on track, I just did a little demolition research on my orinoco Gold card in my AP500 when you plug into the antenna jack it looks like it disables the internal antenna, this can be verified by doing a ohms test from the pigtail center pin to the rear of the orinoco card connector it will come up as .01ohm, if you look to the right (from the back of the connector) you will see a little wire that connects to the pc board that I think goes to the internal antenna this shows no reading to anything with the pigtail attached and a low ohm reading to the rear pin with no pigtail attached, so cutting off the antennas woulden't seem to me to do very much. but, I did try and wrap the unit in copper foil from front to back did decrease my noise floor by -2 not much but every bit counts in this game !!

Reed

remynse

01-27-2003, 08:32 AM

Anyone have a detailed picture of a Lucent /Orinoco card with the internal antenna connector removed and a pigtail soldered on? By removing the internal connector does this disconnect the internal antennas?

aerocoach

01-27-2003, 01:18 PM

Hmm.... How about shielding Orinoco cards with soda can (thin aluminum) and cover it with either duct or electrical tape (do not cover the connector hole - need for pigtail access) to prevent leaks and crosstalk?

Just a thought...

bobbyc

01-27-2003, 01:38 PM

I've wrapped two cards in aluminum tape, wrapped it around and around till it was 1/2" thick, and the two could still associate and ping each other. And I did go inside the card and cut out the antenna wafers.
Now I've been told that if I grounded the aluminum tape, it would sheild better. But I didn't bother.
Reason we wanted better sheilding is because our main tower has 6 DSSS cards up there, and we are sharing channels. Right now we are getting away with just using horizontal polarization for the backhauls, and vertical for the sectors... but you can still see the noise spike on the cards. We're just going to leave things as is until 5.8ghz support and equipment is around.
Bob C