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Boost Your Wireless Signal With a Homemade Wifi Extender


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#1 Nvyseal

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Posted 05 September 2007 - 06:59 PM

It's amazing what a few sheets of tinfoil can do for the strength of your wireless signal. As shown above, by carefully folding tinfoil into a parabola, you can boost your wireless strength tremendously. The fellas in the video saw gains from 82% to just under 100%, though I only saw boosts of around five percent, so your mileage may vary. This project should only take about three minutes and will hopefully leave you with impressive results. If you don't want to attach unsightly parabolic boosters and you're using the same basic router as the fellas in the video, you can also upgrade your firmware to DD-WRT—a free hack that will turn your $60 router into a $600 router and allow you to boost your Wi-Fi signal from your router's control panel.



#2 brewin

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Posted 05 September 2007 - 07:20 PM

I've been doing this for years. It's the only way my POS D-link wireless router can reach the other side of the house. In fact, my neighbor (about 300 feet away) even said he could connect to it. Well, he could if I gave him the WEP key...

#3 Sphere

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Posted 05 September 2007 - 08:35 PM

View Postbrewin, on Sep 5 2007, 09:20 PM, said:

I've been doing this for years. It's the only way my POS D-link wireless router can reach the other side of the house. In fact, my neighbor (about 300 feet away) even said he could connect to it. Well, he could if I gave him the WEP key...
Give me 10 minutes on your lawn and I have internet....

WEP keys are too easy hacked man, at least go WPA... I'd say

#4 brewin

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Posted 05 September 2007 - 08:53 PM

View PostSphere, on Sep 5 2007, 03:35 PM, said:

Give me 10 minutes on your lawn and I have internet....

WEP keys are too easy hacked man, at least go WPA... I'd say
I realize that. I live on a gravel road with no traffic and the only neighbor close enough is 80 years old. If he knows how to crack a WEP key, then more power to him. :)

#5 KelpFries

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Posted 06 September 2007 - 12:45 PM

Why dont you explain to us how to use a pringles can dave?! :)

#6 Nvyseal

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Posted 06 September 2007 - 02:02 PM

View PostKelpFries, on Sep 6 2007, 05:45 AM, said:

Why dont you explain to us how to use a pringles can dave?! :chriso:
:) :roadrunner:

#7 Camaro

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Posted 06 September 2007 - 05:12 PM

I have been using the DD-WRT for 2 years now, maybe more. I only use the wep key because my laptop dont like wpa but the nice thing about the dd-wrt it can block mac addresses, so I never worry about the encryption,
and with my router as is I can get signal for about a block, maybe abit farther sometimes.

#8 chriso_86

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Posted 06 September 2007 - 05:20 PM

Actually, a German scientist found a better algorithm that can break wep in 5 seconds. WEP is not considered encryption really at all anymore. I'm in a class for my networking degree on wireless and we kinda have a good laugh over WEP.

#9 Camaro

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Posted 06 September 2007 - 06:56 PM

my router can permit only the mac addresses I specify, so I can run no encryption an still keep outsiders from the network, which is good, also I dont broadcast the SSID either.




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