Cheap WiFi Antenna Boost

We recently setup a wireless antenna and bridge for a customer in Occoquan, Virginia that needed WiFi to be transmitted across a large building and through floors. While the setup worked, the signal was poor. This caused lows speeds and even occasional lost connections. Therefore we setup a cheap directional antenna to point the signal directly where it needed to go. This fixed the problem by increasing the signal strength by about 40%.

How To Build The Antenna

Go to freeantennas.com’s Ez-12 page to download the image at the bottom of the page. Then resize the image as needed, print it, use business-card strength paper, glue on the aluminum foil, and put it together. Patrick Norton explains this simple project on his old DL.tv show.

Linksys Dual-Band Gaming Adapter

I just installed the Linksys Dual-Band Gaming Adapter for someone. It works great and is easier to set up than older models. It’s also an N router that can use 2.4 or 5GHz so if you have an N network, it should be more solid than a similar G device.

I only have a couple of nit-picks:

  1. Why call this a Gaming Adapter? It’s just a wireless bridge that allows one to hook up a ethernet connection to a wireless network. It works for any computer.. not just your game console.
  2. Linksys should offer a 5 port version like they did a couple of years ago. You could easily hook up a 5 port switch for the functionality, but the older WET54GS5 was a simpler solution. And if this is aimed at people with gaming consoles, it is likely that those people would have multiple devices needing Internet access such as a TiVo or additional game consoles.