Wireless Internet

[satpro]

Hi. We have just moved in to a very nice rented house about 15k from CM city. Our landlord provides free Wi Fi which is great but, the Wi Fi dongle thingy is in the landlords house and the single is very weak in our house, any one know if we can purchase a booster for our laptop to get a stronger signal. PS. when i take our laptop near the landlords house i get a brilliant signal.

Thanks SP.

[TexasMike]

Yes you can. I just bought a booster antenna for my tent here in Iraq as the signal from the tower is weak and now I have excellent reception. To bad I can't fix the speed.

[Mestizo]

I assume your laptop has wireless built in. If so, there is no place to plug in an external antennae. It is possible to use an PCMCIA wireless card with an external antennae, however my experience has been that the internal wireless cards out perform pcmcia cards with both 8 dBi omni-antennaes and 15+ dbi directionals.

Your best bet is going to be with a wireless repeater placed between your landlord's AP and yourself. Something simple like a Linksys WAP54G has the ability to be configured in repeater mode. You'll have to experiment with placement, but the highest point in your house with clearest line of sight to your landlords place, *might* be enough.

Another low tech/ ghetto solution I have seen, is placing a parabolic shaped frying pan next to your laptop. This also works with a similarly shaped Asian fry basket, dipper thing (not sure of the exact proper name, but refer to the linked picture below). Your mileage may vary, but this does work. Follows the same principle as a satellite dish that collects and redirects signals to the collector in the center.

http://www.kk.org/streetuse/Chinesefry.jpg

Of course you probably dont want to carry a frying pan around the house with your laptop, so the wireless repeater option is probably your best bet

Hope this helps,

Mestizo

[shadiadi]

You might want to check his router, there are routers by tp=link you can by that have a further range they are about 2000-2500 baht and ask him to install it just plug a lan cable into port 1-4 of the router from his not in the WAN port and it should be better. Other alternative is contact 3bb and get your own installed.

[sudo]

Maybe just making a basic antenna would be helpful, my router is in a far corner of our house, so this helps direct the signal somewhat. I found it had about a 10% increase in signal strength after I made one, and if you already have a signal most of the time this should make it strong enough to give you signal all the time. But youd need to ask your landlord if you can put it on their Access point.

To find the plans for one type "Ez-12 Parabolic Reflector Template" into google, the first result is what you want. Sorry I can't post links atm.

[Tywais]

To find the plans for one type "Ez-12 Parabolic Reflector Template" into google, the first result is what you want. Sorry I can't post links atm.

I've built one similar for our office access point. The problem is it is meant to wrap around an antenna which unfortunately the OP can't with his notebook. The best bet is what Mestizo mentioned and get an inexpensive external access point or repeater.

[sudo]

Ah sorry, yeah i misread the OP. Another option may be if the landlords computer is not moved around much ie a desktop or laptop that is always used in the one spot. would be to get a extension USB cable, and hang the dongle up as high as you can, the higher you get it the better range it will have. Even just bluetacked a meter or 2 up the wall will probably make a reasonable difference.

[satpro]

Hi All.

Thanks for your replys re weak internet. Didn't fancy walking round the house with a Wok, and didn't want to upset our new landlord by telling his "FREE WI FI" is rubbish, so bought a dongle thingy called Gsky USB Wi Fi Adaptor. Model 802. 11G And it works really well. Cost 1590 Bht.

Thanks for your help.

SP