Improving Indoors Wi-Fi Reception?

VirtualUK asks: "I was given a WiFi base station and PCMCIA card for my laptop as a Christmas present so that I could read slashdot...urm I mean work, in any room in the house. When I read the manual it stated lofty figures of being able to work up to hundreds of feet inside office environments, so I felt that it would be more than capable of being able to allow me to stay connected in my tiny house. It seems however that the WiFi gods are against me as I tap this posting in the next room to the WiFi base station, a mere 20-30 feet away, just regular so-thin-I-can-hear-an-ant-fart walls, no kryptonite, no lead cladding and yet still I struggle to get a constant connection. I've found that shifting the laptop to face different directions sometimes helps, but as should it be this hard at such short range? Is there anything I can do to make my WiFi work better in a house environment?"

Comments

Build a new antenna

[jsimon12]

Here, this antenna rocks, built one myself and it is well worth the effort and the 10 bucks or so it costs in parts. Heck I can use my wireless down the block (almost).

Brand?

[cpthowdy]

It would help if we knew what brand your gear is, maybe there are some known issues, firmware/driver updates, etc.

Linksys Helps!

[AllMightyPaul]

Linksys has a signal booster. It looks expensive and I've never used it, but it claims to be great.

Suboptimal PCMCIA card design?

[Nathan Ramella]

If you notice the orientation of your pcmcia card, your radio signals are radiating out at a 90 degree angle from what would be optimal for talking to your AP.

Could be part of the problem.. Try turning your laptop 90 degress onto it's side. :)

Re:Suboptimal PCMCIA card design?

[Nathan Ramella]

Sorry, I forgot to include this to back up my argument.

http://www.trevormarshall.com/byte_articles/byte1. htm

QUOTE.. And this leads us nicely into the real world. The designers of the antennas for PCMCIA cards face a real problem. It is not easy to form antennas onto the small circuit board inside the bulbous plastic cover that sticks of the end of the PCMCIA card. I won't go into the technology here, but below is plotted a typical sensitivity measurement for a laptop equipped with a PCMCIA WLAN card. The effective gain of this antenna is low, less than 0 dBi (typically -4 dBi) and it is very directional.

There's things you can try

[WolfWithoutAClause]

- experiment with moving the base station around

I've found that some things (water, water pipes, metal of any kind, walls to some extent, some metallised windows absorb/reflect the microwaves extensively. Sometimes you can move the base station so that it peeps around the edge of stuff, and then you can find good coverage over the whole building.

Also, try putting the aerial higher or lower, near a window or door may be good.

- find out if there's any interference

Some equipment, noteably, cordless phones; less likely microwave ovens (get your oven fixed if that's the case!) Bluetooth can also interfere.

- get better equipment

Ultimately I've found some equipment has poor range. You don't say what equipment you have. You may be able to modify the aerial on a base station, but try everything before doing that; it may make your equipment illegal.

I've found ranges of 100 ft or so in a building is quite achievable, although sighting of the base station is sometimes critical.

Faraday.

[Tom7]

You might look into a "Faraday Cage," which I hear improves reception tremendously.

FWIW, my little linksys base station gives me solid coverage all over my house, and even outside. Maybe it's the base station or card?

tall omni's are good for yardage

[ubiquitin]

Check out the telex 2.4ghz antenna page for some antennas which will get you some serious signal. I had great luck with their 9.5dbi omni and have strong signal (5 bars on a tibook) at about 30 meters, which is enough to cover my back yard. (Remember that decibel is a logarithmic scale.) They apparently don't advertise these things, but they should.

I recomend....

[OctaneZ]

The judicious use of a sledgehammer!
The removal of a few walls (I recomend avoiding weight-bearing walls)
Really improved my signal reception!

WARNING: you MAY not get your security deposit back

-OZ

Re:Any other 2.4 ghz devices?

[cooldev]

Or somebody else nearby with Wi-Fi...

Try changing the channel. I had bad range with my Linksys until I changed it to use channel 11.