Beware of omni directional aerials. You cant get something for nothing, if you look everywhere at the same time (360 deg Onmi style) you cant get good throughput needed for Skype calls. Thats why satellite dishes are the shape they are, and not like old fashioned aerials. Its like the focused beam of a flashlight verses the 360 light of a household bulb.

The Cantenna (Pringles can style) aerial is too directional (like a laser pointer) and has issues on a moving platform like a boat. Although I do use mine in some cases when the boat is docked) This is why the Hawking semi directional aerial works so well. It looks only thro a 45 degree range. Why look for hotspots out at sea when they will never exist, just point the aerial towards the shore or a town.



USB2 connected devices are plenty fast and Ethernet offers no advantage in this case. Bridges and signal amplifiers will require you have access to the source Access Point which will never happen when your surfing free access points from a boat. These are designed for increasing the range of your home or biz wireless networks only.

If you want some fun, connect your GPS to NetStumbler (free download) and it will mark the Lat/Long of every access point it finds for you when you do war driving (or in our case - WarSailing?)

All the best Joe #872