Wi-Fire high-gain Wi-Fi antenna doesn't always ignite

In my quest for a wider-reaching Wi-Fi signal, I took notice when I stumbled upon a new (to me) company called hField Technologies. It markets a directional USB antenna that can deliver a signal up to 1,000 feet. But what really got me? A review from MacEnstein.com that claimed hField’s $79 Wi-Fire antenna resulted in 5x the range of a typical notebook antenna.

So I called up the company to find out what sort of technology it employs to kindle this sort of magic. CEO Tom DiClemente told me that the 10.4dBi high-gain antenna delivers remarkably good performance across the entire 2.4GHz range, and can hold speeds at a very low signal strength. I have been trying to stretch my Wi-Fi signal to a neighbor’s Mac computer for a while now (more on that later), and so far nothing has done the trick. So I asked DiClemente to send me a test unit.

He did, and I took the antenna to my neighbor’s office. Setup was snap-simple, and the software provides a comprehensive and easy-to-use view of all available networks, including signal strength. It picked up my router, roughly 200 feet away through a thicket of trees, at signal strength of 38 percent. Awesome, I thought.

Until I fired up Safari: Nothing loaded. I called a tech-support guy at hField and he asked me to check the IP address assigned to the antenna. Sure enough, it was 169.254.x.x, which is never a good thing. That should be easy enough to fix, he said, adding we’d just assign a new IP address to the antenna. We spent an hour tweaking, uninstalling, reinstalling, and changing configurations. No go.

I have to be fair to hField: The computer I’m attaching the Wi-Fire to isn’t my own, and I can’t be sure its settings are correct. But I’m not giving up yet: I want that 5x-range jackpot. I’ll keep you posted.