Boosting Signal

[ed84c]

Rescently upgraded to a wirless network, but my comp is right on the edge of the reachable radius.

 

Any way (without buying a booster) i could help to increase signal strength (without moving router/ comp)?

[MulderMan]

what type of wifi is it, a, b, g? you can build whats called a "cantenna" if you have a suitable wifi card.

[ed84c]

It think g; belkin.

 

Cantenna?, its an external thingy-ma-jig, apposed to a PCI card.

[cyeokpeng]

Err, without moving the position of the router and the computer???

If it is at the end of the reachable radius, the only thing that you can do is to remove as much physical obstruction between the line of sight of the router and the computer. Anything metallic will block EM waves and reduce the signal strength. Also you can try locating your wireless router higher up so as to reduce any possible physical obbstruction.

Another way you may try is to move a little bit of the wireless card postition to move out of any possible multipath fading phenomenon.

 

But these two methods may not be that effective after all. The most ffective solution is only to move the computer nearer to the wireless router.

 

Cheers,

Yeok Peng

[5614]

Any way (without buying a booster) i could help to increase signal strength

how does a booster pack work?

 

^repliacte one.

 

also you could extend the aerial.

[cyeokpeng]

how does a booster pack work?

 

^repliacte one.

 

also you could extend the aerial.

 

Most wi-fi systems that you bought from the store cannot extend tha aerial antenna, it is fixed. The only thing we consumers could do to increse signal strength and coverage is to position the antenna of the wireless accesspoint 90 degrees up!

[5614]

you can get signal amplifications for TV, which just plug between the aerial input and the TV and try to boost the signal, they work by having 2 extra aerials and a round circle aerial thingy! i dunno, i just got one yesterday (part of a new TV-DVD-VCD with 5.1 surround sound for only £200 which is bloody good!)... sounds similar to the signal ampifier mentioned a few posts ago, you should look into it if you still have the problem, it should work well, especially if you are only at the edge of the signal.

[YT2095]

the TV signal pre-amps will be on a much lower frequency and will also have filtering to block the sort of freq`s the wi-fi uses.

they`re on a very narrow bandwidth, it won`t work

 

as for the antenna, the only thing you could Possibly do would be to make the thing Directional like a Yagi, you`ll get a good db gain that way, but it`ll require a lot of calculations even for a simple 3 element beam.

[Royston]

You can buy amps for wifi, but they're illegal in the UK. A friend of mine made a wifi antenna out of a USB dongle and a wok, but the curvature wasn't brilliant to get a solid signal. You can buy digital antenna's on E-bay that'll give you a huge signal...it's up to you if you want a huge dish sitting on your pc.

[YT2095]

ROFLOL, the old "Wok`n`Coat Hanger" trick

 

sorry, I got to go,,, there`s Beer on my monitor to wipe off now.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

You can get cheap WiFi antennas in computer stores that replace the existing antenna (many routers let you just unscrew the existing antenna and add a new one) on your router or computer wireless card. I use one and it works fairly well to boost the signal on my desktop.