Internet in Uni Halls booster question??

moneypooh

My DD is in residence at off campus Halls in London. There is a router on each floor for wifi but it's not good at all. OK, we are complaining to the Landlords but until something is resolved what is the best way to boost the signal?
Can we need to buy an ordinary booster plug in and then this would be able to booster her signal in her room?


TIA

esuhl

A wifi repeater (i.e. booster) should work so long as you set in up in a location that has good wifi signal -- halfway between the router and the laptop. Unfortunately that probably won't be possible in university halls...

moneypooh

The Halls aren't on campus and are a converted small block of flats. Each floor of 18 rooms has a router so may be possible???

I_have_spoken

Simple aerial booster using items available in student digs...

paddyrg

There are two potential problems - wifi connection and network contention. If you've no bars, the connection can be improved by a repeater. If the contention is the issue, it'll make no difference and she'll need to stop all the bit torrenters and netflix viewers in the house/block!

Quiet_Spark

I_have_spoken wrote: »

Simple aerial booster using items available in student digs..

Boosting the transmit signal on the receiving device may help, but only if you receive the signal in the first place.
My guess is that the OP's daughter doesn't have lawful access to the college access point, which means there is nothing she can do in the first place.

The above of course assumes that nobody else in the block is spanking the connection to start with, because that will have a detrimental effect regardless of how good the connection quality/signal strength is.

moneypooh

No one has a very strong signal and hoping with the Landlord next week at a 'halls' meeting should hopefully address the situation. No good advertising wifi if they can't get it at a good rate.

Quiet_Spark

moneypooh wrote: »

No good advertising wifi if they can't get it at a good rate.

Did they advertise it, or actually guarantee it?
My money says it's the former, in which case your DD doesn't have a leg to stand on.
Probably not what you want to hear, but that's life.

securityguy

Quiet_Spark wrote: »

Boosting the transmit signal on the receiving device may help, but only if you receive the signal in the first place..

Using a high-gain antenna usually helps both receive and transmit, of course.

Quiet_Spark

securityguy wrote: »

Using a high-gain antenna usually helps both receive and transmit, of course.

Only to a point.
Although our place is what you would call a "new build" (stud walls throughout), I still had to use hi-gain aeriels on both my chosen access point (text removed by MSE Forum Team) as well as the receiving device in order to guarantee a Wi-Fi signal that was actually useable.

esuhl

moneypooh wrote: »

The Halls aren't on campus and are a converted small block of flats. Each floor of 18 rooms has a router so may be possible???

A booster might help (assuming signal strength is the problem).

It would probably help to download InSSIDer, a small program that shows all available wireless access points with the signal strength. So you can move the laptop around (or move a booster around) until you find an area with good reception.

http://www.inssider.com/

Alternatively, if you can access the routers physically, you *might* be able to use poweline adapters. I haven't used them myself, so I'm not 100% sure whether you would need to modify anything in the router settings (which, presumably you can't do).