Extending the range of your wireless router

Marty999

Apparently you can do this by making your own parabolic reflector using aluminium foil. You can download a template from here, and this video shows you how. This tip was sent in the monthly news email from CounterSpy.

It all looks a bit like an April Fool to me, so I just wondered if anyone had actually tried it? If it works successfully it really will save money as wireless router extenders seem to cost £30 upwards.

fwor

My brother-in-law works in the field of radar, and he says that he has seen functioning examples of this type of reflector on a wi-fi aerial.

However, the problem is that you are turning an omni-directional aerial into one that is fairly directional. Ok if you have just one location where you need good signal strength, but not much use for anyone who has more than one PC and wants to get reception anywhere in the house/garden.

foofi22

I have seen these before and I believe this also to be a joke.

Parabolic antennas are precisely manufactured such that each point on the surface reflects an incident radio wave (from some desired direction - almost always boresight) to a single point in the "middle" of the dish, this provides the gain.

A bowl covered in foil or a folded piece of foil is never going to achieve this, although it may give you a slight improvement depending on the quality of construction! You will not be able to make a very decent directional antenna using this method!

Best to just get another router and set it to "repeater" mode.

Ever seen a satellite dish made of crudely folded foil?

(I work in radio communications/radar)

Paul_Herring

You'd be better off with a more reliable solution using another router set up to bridge to your original router.

Unless you're into this sort of thing for fun of course.

BillScarab

I believe this would work although not particularly well. You can also use a Pringles Tube or a tin can. There's lots of info if you google it.

Buying a proper repeater is likely to work better though and look better.