this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Would a good antenna fix my wifi? (beehaw.org)
submitted 1 year ago by hallettj@beehaw.org to c/chat@beehaw.org
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It's a story as old as time. I moved into a new place with great fiber internet - but the modem is in the garage, my desktop PC is not, and the place is a rental so I have limited options for making modifications. The signal is not bad, but I'm getting dropouts.

Since the PC and router are fixed in place I thought maybe a directional antenna or two would help? 5GHz directional antennae are kinda scarce which makes me wonder if I'm on the wrong track. Does this new "beamforming" thing supersede directional antennae?

I have 802.11ax (a.k.a. Wi-Fi 6) on both sides of the connection. Maybe I could upgrade to Wi-Fi 6E and give 6GHz a go? Maybe that would be worse due to the intervening wall...

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[–] Pons_Aelius@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you are having dead spots do not use 5Ghz as it has less penetration than 2.4ghz.

One option could be a powerline adaptor to move the signal into the room with the pc.

And the sure-fire but ugly option is to use a cat5 cable from the modem to the PC.

[–] hallettj@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You make a good point about 2.4GHz; that would probably be more reliable, but slower. It's kinda disappointing to have a gigabit connection, but lose 70% of the speed at the last-meter connection. But 5GHz also loses most of the upstream speed.

Maybe rolling up my sleeves and putting in a cable is the way to go. I have a thought about going into the furnace closet, snuggling the cable alongside the insulation of a duct into the crawlspace, and coming up out the wall through a modified electrical outlet plate. I might be able to pull it off.

Thanks for the ideas!

[–] Pons_Aelius@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Cable is always the best option for speed, thought it is a bit of a pain in the arse to set up.

The problem with things like power line extensions and wifi extenders is that you have no guarantee it will solve the problem as you may have a huge amount of noise in the power-lines that kills transmission bandwidth.

There are signal strength apps available that allow you to map the dead spots and try and fix the penetration issue.

A simple test is a steel wok, use it to focus the signal towards the pc (this will block the signal in the other direction) this will give you the highest penetration with the standard setup and it may solve the problem.

[–] aperson@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're taking me back to the days when cantennas were popular.