How to Increase Your Wi-Fi Signal

Seems plausible... Comments from the WiFi folks?

-- DaveC snipped-for-privacy@bogusdomain.net This is an invalid return address Please reply in the news group

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.