How can I improve my cellular or WiFi signal (with and without Internet)?

How have you improved your cellular or WiFi signal (with and without Internet) at home and while away from home connecting to hotspots?

This was just now posted to comp.mobile.android but maybe pe> The cost of a WRT54G is somewhere between zero and $1 depending on your

negotiating skills, ;-) > I'd be interested in hearing about your far better option.

You have a point in that every house used to have a WRT54G so they are still ubiquitous, and are sold used all over at less than the price of a Starbucks' Caramel Macchiato.

Like everything, there are pros and cons, where certainly these ubiquitous routers are basically free.

The cons are that they're not N or ac or 5GHz, but that's not too bad a price to pay.

They work fine as wired repeaters using the original Linksys firmware, but all the ones I have can't be set up as wireless repeaters due to the default firmware not having that feature.

Certainly you can reflash with DD-WRT or Tomato firmware, but then it gets problematic in that some WRT54G routers don't carry enough ROM, but by now usually there is a tiny version of the alternative firmware.

So, the cost here is just in the research effort of figuring out the technical solution that fits your particular version of WRT54G.

This thread has two separate questions, where that solution above won't fit the op's question but it would fit the wifi part of the secondary question (but not the cellular part of the secondary question).

Here's my summary of good answers:

Q: With just a phone on foot or in a car, how can I increase my WiFi or cellular signal strength? A: I don't think there is a good solution that is viable, but you can strap the phone to a parabolic antenna which isn't practical in most cases.

Q: Is there a wired transceiver I can plug into my phone? A: Nobody seems to be aware of one (they exist for computers but not for phones).

Q: With just a phone & laptop (but no Internet at home) how can I connect to a hotspot that is just a kilometer or two away? A: Buy a 2.4GHz 802.11 transceiver that plugs into the laptop and is powered either by the laptop or by an external power supply.

Q: With just a phone & laptop (but no Internet at home) how can I connect to a hotspot that is more than just a kilometer or two away? A: Buy a 2.4GHz 802.11 transceiver that is powered by a POE (power over ethernet) and place it to receive the cellular signal by LOS (line of sight) & set the transceiver up as a router to hand out DHCP addresses. Then plug the one RJ45 outlet on the transceiver to as many laptops as you like.

Q: At home, how do I increase my phone's cellular signal? A: If you have Internet coming to your WiFi router, you can substitute for low cellular signal by using WiFi calling if your carrier and phone allow it. Some carriers even give you a wifi-calling-optimized router for free.

Q: What's another way to increase my phone's cellular signal at home? A: You can ask your carrier to send you a signal booster.

Q: What's another way to increase my phone's cellular signal at home? A: You can ask your carrier to send you a small home tower which connects to your home router.

Q: At home, how do I increase my WiFi signal to cover the whole house? A: Lots (and lots) of ways, so we have to take them one by one.

1) Wire an output from the router to your distant location 2) Add a powered switch if you have more than four output wires 3) Buy a new SOHO router that has 802.11 ac and 5GHZ 4) Add a wired SOHO router to the existing router (aka a wired extender) 5) Add a wireless repeater to the existing router 6) Add a wired transceiver with a directional antenna (usually parabolic) to the existing router. 7) ?

How have you improved your cellular or WiFi signal (with and without Internet) at home and while away from home connecting to hotspots?

Reply to
Jonas Schneider
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On Sat, 25 Feb 2017 04:59:27 +0000 (UTC), in , Jonas Schneider wrote:\

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"How to steal your neighbor's Wi-Fi"

Reply to
Valeska Kowalczyk

My neighbor leaves his WiFi unlocked. It's been that way for 16 years now. But he's very inconsiderate in that it's only a 5 Mb service (yes I measured it). But still, it does come in handy when mine goes out...

Reply to
AL

On Sun, 26 Feb 2017 01:23:47 -0700, in , AL wrote:\

The situation is one-sided because all name brand home routers are poo.

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Your neighbor's $75 name brand router suffers from three faults. [a] weak power output (17.5 dBm) [b] what little power there is is wasted in omni directions (1.5dBi) [c] low sensitivity (-80 dBm)

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You could easily buy a $75 radio with these three benefits. [a] strong power output (27 dBm) [b] concentrated in one direction (30 dBm) [c] high sensitivity (-95 dBm)

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The eirp of the neighbor's $75 name brand router is likely about 19 dBm (17.5 dBm in power output plus 1.5dBi in antenna gain) or about 80 milliwatts (which is poo).

The eirp of a good $75 radio can easily be 36dBm or 4 watts (where the antenna alone can easily give you 30dBi (1 watt) and the transmitter itself can easily generate 27 dBm (1/2 watt) so you're really only limited by the FCC legal limit.

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Even that FCC legal limit is only for one access point, so, you can put five of them in series or parallel your house if you wanted to and it would be perfectly legal.

The net of all this is that typical name brand home routers are poo. If you want to connect to them, it will be a one sided connection where your antenna gain and receiver sensitivity will count far more than your transmit power will.

Reply to
Valeska Kowalczyk

Ah. I'll just mosey next door and tell my neighbor to shape up his free unlocked WiFi to improve my unauthorized use then?

Me buy? My WiFi works fine. The neighbors is just a handy backup. Though sometimes the grandkids mistakenly hook up their phones to it thinking it's mine.

It's free poo though.

My house?? Language problem again?

I'm betting you don't have a clue what I said. Ah. I'll bet this is spam (I didn't look at the links). Where's nospam when you need him...

Reply to
AL

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