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I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

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Re: I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

#91

Post by tqdm »

mrtksn wrote: post #37

It can work surprisingly well, I made a "dish" with an aluminum foil that was able to connect to a Romanian Wi-Fi hotspot from Bulgaria, according to Google Maps it should be something like 20KM distance. I should note that I had direct view of the town as I had significantly higher altitude. The hotspot was some kind of public service provided by the Romanian town as it's name suggested. The ip WhoIs also confirmed…

I've also achieved substantial improvement with simple parabolic shaped, ~40 cm wide aluminum foil constructions, but there always seemed a bit luck involved and it needed some tweaking. Not sure whether the foil mainly acted as shielding that reduces the noise floor from other directions. I've read in other forums that fiddling with aluminum foil is mostly luck because additional reflective surfaces also introduce interferrence patterns unless they are precisely aligned. Even without aluminum foil it often helps to move either receiver or sender by fractions of 12.5 cm (the wavelength of 2.4 Ghz radiation) or of 6.0 cm (in case of 5 Ghz) because the space is basically riddled with interference patterns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqqEYz38ens

Re: I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

#92

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

pimlottc wrote: post #31

A bit off topic, but what is this page doing, loading almost 500K in 2 XHR calls for approximately 9K of text... Egads, all the images are inlined data URIs! I was staring at a blank page with a single image for over 10 seconds before the article text loaded. No loading indicator or anything.

There's no reason for this content to use JavaScript at all. I'm going to start holding this up as an example of why browsers shouldn't have JavaScript at all - many developers simply don't understand when not to use it. Educating them one at a time won't fix it.

Re: I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

#93

Post by gonzo »

throwaway613834 wrote: post #86
mrtksn wrote: post #37

It can work surprisingly well, I made a "dish" with an aluminum foil that was able to connect to a Romanian Wi-Fi hotspot from Bulgaria, according to Google Maps it should be something like 20KM distance. I should note that I had direct view of the town as I had significantly higher altitude. The hotspot was some kind of public service provided by the Romanian town as it's name suggested. The ip WhoIs also confirmed…

This seems great for sending but how does it work for receiving? Or did you somehow do this on both ends?

Most antennae are retro directive. Gain is gain.

Re: I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

#94

Post by aylons »

throwaway613834 wrote: post #86
mrtksn wrote: post #37

It can work surprisingly well, I made a "dish" with an aluminum foil that was able to connect to a Romanian Wi-Fi hotspot from Bulgaria, according to Google Maps it should be something like 20KM distance. I should note that I had direct view of the town as I had significantly higher altitude. The hotspot was some kind of public service provided by the Romanian town as it's name suggested. The ip WhoIs also confirmed…

This seems great for sending but how does it work for receiving? Or did you somehow do this on both ends?

It's not needed to do it in both ends. Naturally, improving both antennas is better than doing in only one, but every improvement in sending is completely equivalent in receiving for a system that uses the same antennas for both directions of communication.

So, if a new antenna in client side improves signal reception by 3dB, it also improves transmitted power by 3dB. If you used the same antenna on the other side, the 3dB would be added again in both reception and transmission, for a total gain of 6dB each direction.

Re: I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

#95

Post by stygiansonic »

arxpoetica wrote: post #65

When we were kids we took massive mesh wire frames and wrapped them around the receivers of these kind [1] of dinky walkie talkies. It fully extended the range by a whole two blocks. We thought we'd invented sliced bread. [1] https://img.segundamano.mx/medium/32/3227658794.jpg

Wow, I had the exact same set of walkie talkies as a kid! That image certainly brought back some memories! :)

Re: I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

#96

Post by throwaway613834 »

aylons wrote: post #94
throwaway613834 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems great for sending but how does it work for receiving? Or did you somehow do this on both ends?

It's not needed to do it in both ends. Naturally, improving both antennas is better than doing in only one, but every improvement in sending is completely equivalent in receiving for a system that uses the same antennas for both directions of communication. So, if a new antenna in client side improves signal reception by 3dB, it also improves transmitted power by 3dB. If you used the same antenna on the other side, t…

> It's not needed to do it in both ends. Naturally, improving both antennas is better than doing in only one, but every improvement in sending is completely equivalent in receiving for a system that uses the same antennas for both directions of communication.

Does this actually make sense to you? Gain is a factor; it needs to be multiplied by something. Here's the obvious thought-experiment: consider an (ideal) parabolic mirror in (a vacuum). Put a lightbulb (infinitely tiny) at the focus. Light will come out parallel and will be just as strong no matter how far away the receiver is. i.e. the distance will be irrelevant when the sender is at the focus. Now try reversing their roles, with the lightbulb far away and the receiver at the focus. How strong is the received signal at the focus? You're claiming it won't matter how far away the sender is from the focus, which makes no sense.

Re: I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

#97

Post by throwaway613834 »

gonzo wrote: post #93
throwaway613834 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems great for sending but how does it work for receiving? Or did you somehow do this on both ends?

Most antennae are retro directive. Gain is gain.

I replied here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16012484

Re: I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

#98

Post by hunter2_ »

throwaway613834 wrote: post #96
aylons wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not needed to do it in both ends. Naturally, improving both antennas is better than doing in only one, but every improvement in sending is completely equivalent in receiving for a system that uses the same antennas for both directions of communication. So, if a new antenna in client side improves signal reception by 3dB, it also improves transmitted power by 3dB. If you used the same antenna on the other side, t…

> It's not needed to do it in both ends. Naturally, improving both antennas is better than doing in only one, but every improvement in sending is completely equivalent in receiving for a system that uses the same antennas for both directions of communication. Does this actually make sense to you? Gain is a factor; it needs to be multiplied by something. Here's the obvious thought-experiment: consider an (ideal) parab…

Think of a parabolic dish on a microphone at a sporting event. The dish blocks noise and interference from the directions you don't want to listen to, and less noise and interference is as useful as if the sender had more power. Same result of better s/n either way.

Or a TV satellite dish. If you were correct, you could rip off the dish and point the antenna forwards instead of backwards, and still watch TV. Not gonna happen.

Re: I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

#100

Post by throwaway613834 »

hunter2_ wrote: post #98
throwaway613834 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not needed to do it in both ends. Naturally, improving both antennas is better than doing in only one, but every improvement in sending is completely equivalent in receiving for a system that uses the same antennas for both directions of communication. Does this actually make sense to you? Gain is a factor; it needs to be multiplied by something. Here's the obvious thought-experiment: consider an (ideal) parab…

Think of a parabolic dish on a microphone at a sporting event. The dish blocks noise and interference from the directions you don't want to listen to, and less noise and interference is as useful as if the sender had more power. Same result of better s/n either way. Or a TV satellite dish. If you were correct, you could rip off the dish and point the antenna forwards instead of backwards, and still watch TV. Not gonn…

> The dish blocks noise and interference from the directions you don't want to listen to

You shouldn't need to talk about noise or interference for the argument to make sense. Just imagine there isn't any. The argument yields absurd results either way: the power certainly does depend on how far the sender is from the focus.

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