I am not really sure of the questions here.

Exchanging the antenna is obviously possible, but difficult. Everyone can see how to disassemble the 770 on
http://www.uselessinfo.pwp.blueyonde...mantlen770.htm
On the same site, the antenna pictures make it clear that the antenna is connected by 2 spring contacts, so the connector should come in place of them.
BTW: solder does not conduct very well at 2.4 GHz, so an external connector should be attached without solder.
And: the built-in antenna is also used for bluetooth, so the antenna replacement should also be used for bluetooth.


As to a repeater, building one is trivial. You can simply buy two D-link G730AP (cheap, small, can be run on external batteries available for the Sony PSP portable), use them in access point mode and connect them via an ethernet cable.

Serious questions: Why two? Why the ethernet cable? I thought that just dropping wireless access points in range of the previous one was enough.

Yes and no. Two and a cable works with any base access point and does not limit throughput. One AP only needs the base access point to support a special "repeater" mode where the extender uses the same channel to receive and retransmit. While this mode is somewhat described in the wifi specs, in practice it only works with two devices of the same manufacturer, and not all of them on top of that. And it cuts your throughput by two, because the same channel is used by the two APs.


Besides, with two you can use a directional antenna on the receive side to pick up distant signals and an omni to retransmit locally, which is what was originally needed.

Do you have a link to a site or page that describes such a setup in more detail (AP setup & such) ? TIA...

That describes which setup?

Well, the details of how your pair of APs is configured to act as a repeater for an existing WLAN : SSID, addresses, keys, type of cable (crossover ?) etc.
It would surprise me if you could just take them out of the box, plug them in and have it just work :-)

I see.

SSID and channels need to be different.

Put the receiving G730 in "client" mode. Configure its SSID and keys according to the network you want to extend (you'll need a computer with an ethernet plug for that).

Connect a cross-over cable (maybe a standard cable would work, I don't know).

Configure the second G730 in "access point" mode to your liking.

That's all.

not even that - a different channel will usually improve bandwidth, as you won't jam yourself, and a separate SSID helps in troubleshooting, but OTOH sharing both is possible (and a standard procedure on campus networks) , and will permit the client to roam between APs without user intervention.

Sevo

Thanks to both for the tips. I happen to know someone who is considering buying one of those expensive repeaters, this could come in handy...

Now, it is done. Dismantled, and soldered:

The Nokia 770 with a brandnew external Antenna with replaced F-I-Antenna by a SMA-Connector and a 14 dBi Dish.

Using Kismet to sniff the air. Better signals than ever. It was worth the risc :-))

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