Trying to boost wireless range

Antennas are much more useful than 'boosters'. While the router might be 'heard' further away, the remote station's return signal strength is just as important. Boosting only helps one side, while antennas benefit both sides equally.

Is the remote station mobile or is a fixed setup acceptable at both ends?
 
So your saying using dd-wrt and boosting the gain or power to the antenna will only help sending and not recieving??

Its fixed, well except for a laptop with built in wifi. Its going to be 2 desktops and the laptop

Its a neighbors house, he lets me put a router there in the window hooked to his comcast(free from his employer). I can get a deal on ATT but its not available. So I cant take up lots of space at his house with a huge antenna but can modify the existing router or diff router if needed.

Its only next door but currently I only get signal near the outside wall closest to his house and the router is closest to my house in outside window(both indoors) its only like ~100' 200 at most to get through my house

I have a log home which may be why its hard to pickup? I dont think the signal is much better outside so the router prob sucks?

Hopefully I can get just a better antenna like bi-directional for a reasonable price that will go on the router

Any suggestions on them??

I'm new to this stuff wifi range ect.. But it seems pretty poor range currently, would like to have my whole house have connection from laptop
Thanks
 
Last edited:
SpeedEuphoria said:
So your saying using dd-wrt and boosting the gain or power to the antenna will only help sending and not recieving??
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Yep. It might help marginally, but usually the power of the base station isn't the problem, it's the power of the remote station that tends to be weaker, so boosting might not help at all, and it can actually hurt by introducing additional distortion and so on to the signal.

What I would suggest in your setup is getting a nice base station for the neighbour's place with a decent directional antenna. I suggest the Ubiquiti NanoStation2, I've had good success with this gear, it's pretty inexpensive and can be mounted outdoors if necessary. I would also get a cheap dd-wrt router like the ASUS WL-520gU and use it in client bridge mode to connect to the NS2 (that is in AP mode), then connect that to your existing router (set up as an AP) to provide service to your house. Alternatively you could get a second NS2 (or NS2 Loco) to place on your side and operate in client mode; they're really fairly inexpensive and that will get you a stronger signal, though I'm pretty confident the single NS2 will do the job.

You could do 'repeater mode', but since you'd have to buy a new router to do that anyway, you may as well do the dedicated client bridge + ap route as it will provide better performance.
 
Track Drew made me think of another option if you got a Pringles can in the kitchen.

+1 for keenan's suggestions, though. Especially if you're wanting to mount the antenna outdoors, want something more sturdy against getting pushed out of place by a neighbor, or they have a bias against the "look" of a mounted piece of aluminum or Pringles can.
 
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