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New style, hope you guys like it.

Introduction

Normally, one Wi-Fi router can reach only so far in your house or small office. There are bound to be some dead spots where you get low or no signals at all. The range of these routers can range depending on the model of your router, the antenna it uses, and mostly the environment. While Wi-Fi signals are suppose to reach around 150 feet from all directions, that number is normally overshoots what most consumers really get, around 50 feet. It all depends on the environment you live in. Of course, if you were at a farm and had a wireless router and had a line of sight 500 feet away, you would get a strong signal. This number, of course, drops depending on the building material that you are in. Such as brick is the worst because brick stops pretty much all Wi-Fi signals from going through. So how would you extend your network if you wanted to reach a router from the opposite of your office or home? Here are a few tips that can help you connect with a strong signal.

Diagnosis

First, you can check your signal strength using a Windows program called NetStumbler or if you are running a Mac, you can use iStumbler which is a similar application. These applications will show you the percentage values for the noise and signal strength. If the application shows a very high noise value, this may be the reason why you cannot get a good signal from your router. But if noise and signal are low, then range would be a problem here.

Upgrade your Base Station (Wireless Router)

Nowadays, a lot of routers are based on the Draft N specification which incorporates MIMO (multiple in, multiple out connections) antenna arrays. MIMO will surely improve your range and speed as it has more antennas then normal g or b routers do. A good place to start is looking at Linksys and several other companies who offer Draft N routers. They cost at around $100 bucks but they can be a bit pricey to around $150, but this is your best bet. Because these Draft N routers improve speed and transmission power, you can just upgrade your router but still keep the wireless adapters in your computer or laptop and the signal of the network should increase noticeably.

Add an Antenna (stronger one perhaps)

Most routers come with a detachable antenna which allows you to upgrade it to a larger one for greater output power and transmission (increasing your range). One good antenna place I have found was HyperLink Technologies which sells stronger antennas and provides information to see if your router is compatible with it or not. Now if you use an Apple AirPort router model, MacWireless has antennas for all the AirPort models (about $180) and it has a much more powerful radio which provides more than 10x the output power of most routers.

Upgrade your Wireless Card/Adapter

Upgrading this will help you, especially if you are running on an older 802.11b version card or adapter. It may be well time to change to a g-rated card or adapter. They should be able to hunt down networks much easier. Also keep in mind that the more external networks there are, the more interferences there may be.

Add more Routers to your Network

Another good way to extend your network’s range is to add more routers to your network. All you need to do is to get another cheap router, set it to the same network name as the main router. In a standard network of multiple routers, you will need to configure one of the routers as the main gateway, plugged into the broadband router (black box). Then you would connect additional routers via Ethernet or wirelessly through WDS (wireless distribution system). You then configure the other base stations to pass traffic in a Bridged Mode, so that way, all responsibility for assigning IP address will go to the primary router.

Want to go cheap? DIY Router Range Increase

Get a small piece of cardboard, maybe the size of a small cookie sheet, and wrap it with foil. Make it a parabola shaped (U shape) figure and set it behind the antenna of the router. The drawback with this is that it will only let you point it in one direction you you may want to strategize where you want to put your router.

If you have any more questions, please don’t hesitate to email me at andrewngo1760@gmail.com