Home > Consumer Reviews > Belkin F5D6900 Desktop Antenna for Wireless Desktop Network Cards

Well, you need to buy this antenna only if you absolutely cannot move or rotate your desktop.

While waiting for my Belkin antenna to arrive, I rotated my desktop to bring the existing antenna in line with the router on the other end of the house. I immediately got an improvement in signal from - low to very good.

When my Belkin antenna arrived, I was surprised to see that it was of the same size as the original antenna supplied with the PCI card! The only advantage is that it is now connected with a cable. So now you can place it anywhere close to the desktop. But the reception remained approximately the same. See description from Belkin below:
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Merchant_Id=1&Product_Id=126498

Here is how you should evaluate if you need this product:

a) Draw an imaginary line between the fixed antenna and the router. Now remove as many obstructions as possible on this line. The CPU itself maybe an obstruction. If possible rotate the CPU.If this helps then the desktop antenna will probably help.

b) Another test to determine if the desktop antenna will help or not is to place a wireless laptop close to the desktop and compare its reception with the desktop. If the two are significantly different then the desktop antenna would help.

Overall, donot expect a miraculous improvement in signal strength. The antenna only helps you to place itself in a better location. You could do the same by moving or relocating your desktop. Good Luck!

I have a wireless network, with two laptops and two desktop systems. I get 100% signal strength throughout my house on the laptops, but when I moved a desktop system to the basement to attach to a MIDI keyboard, I got dismal signal strength (about 20%). A laptop right next to the system showed 100%.

Enter the Belkin antenna. After removing the network card's antenna and attaching the Belkin, signal strength more than quadrupled, to 85%. That makes the internet connection usable again.

I would have rated it a five if it would have given me 100% signal. What's the problem? The card? Planetary alignment? Who knows... But the Belkin was worth it!

Manufacturers description says it can be extended 5' from the card, but the cable is only 40 inches long. It barely reaches from my computer to the top of my desk and it cannot reach to my desired location. It works, but if I had known the cable was so short I would not have bothered to buy it.

Our router got moved to other end of house; as a result, reception on my Belkin card dropped from 48 mbps or something, to all-but-unusable, partly because the PC's own case unavoidably blocks the router's signal.

I bought the F5D6900 antenna out of desperation. The antenna sits on top of my desk, free from blockage. And reception is much much better and usable again: 36 mbps and "good." So for this house's situation, buying the antenna has worked out.

FYI, the cord is short, as others have said. The antenna is quite small, about 4 inches high. It's dense for its tiny size and has a rubber-pad base, which helps keep it from sliding around.

I bought this to share my internet with my neighbor. It claims up to 300 feet and our computers are probably only 100 ft. apart....TOPS! It didn't help one bit, so I will eat this and buy a different one. Disappointed, doesn't live up to its claims.