How to Increase Your Wi-Fi Signal

Seems plausible... Comments from the WiFi folks?

It works because the ethernet cable is acting like an antenna for the wifi card. You could wrap it around a hot dog, or just make a loop and it would probably work just as well.

It might even work better without the cell phone, a high power radio transmitter near a receiving antenna causes the receiver to "block". My cell phone (1 watt on 900mHz and 2 watts on 1800mHz) is strong enough.

The salad bowl is a neat trick, and it would help.

Even better would be to use a USB WiFi dongle and suspend it in the middle of a foil lined salad bowl.

Geoff.

snipped-for-privacy@mendelson.com (Geoffrey S. Mendelson) hath wroth:

Grumble. That was my idea, first. See:

The problem is that the salad bowl is not a perfect approximation of a parabola. In addition, the USB dongle is not a proper feed with a pattern optimized to illuminate the reflector. In short, it's a kludge, but it works.

The salad bowl is optically reflective, so installing a point light source at the focus will display the approximate radiation pattern on the wall. At best, I get an annular ring with about a 15 degree spread, which is far from perfect, but functional. Sorry, but I have to give back by pile of borrowed test equipment before I could make a gain measurement.

I only mentioned it because he suggested to use it to make his ethernet wire coiled around a cell phone antenna work better. It was IMHO a better idea to use an actual transciever instead of a passive antenna that works via leakage.

It's a moot point for me, I'm limited to 100mw EIRP for WiFI and terrestrial ham links.

Geoff.