How to increase your wireless signal!

After waiting 27 long suffering days without internet at home, they finally managed to come and install the damn fiber optics with some good/bad news, the first is that they called asking if they could come 8 days a head of schedule... yay!

Second bit is both good news is that even though i have contacted 30mb download and 5mb upload speed, i can get up to 2x the download and 4x upload if i am connected via Ethernet unfortunately there is a bit of bad news there as well, the router is in the kitchen and the PC is in the bedroom so i have to use wireless which only gaves me about 1/3 download and 2x upload.

Which leads me to the main topic, my project for the coming days will be trying to enhance my wireless connection to see if i can boost my download speed, which will involve some configuration tweaking and making a low tech parabolic reflector made with some tinfoil like the image below.

Unfortunately my router(Thomson TG784) has no external antenna, otherwise there are some better schematics around the web but we do what we can with what we have.

In theory it should reflect part of the waves in the direction of my PC thus increasing the strength of the signal i receive and there fore allow the wireless to work at a slight higher speed therefore increasing my download speed.

One thing that i already done was manually test all 13 channels on my router, by default selects what ever he thinks its best(and fails) and there is no "1 channel to rule them all" and since channels may get interferences from different sources, from electronics to other nearby wireless using the same channel, its best for you to check it out your self... be sure to find the most stable one and not the one with highest signal strength.

I my case it came down to channel 4 or 5, the 4th was the one with the highest strength but the 5th had the most consistency even though a bit less signal, the result was a stable connection that in fact gave me higher download speed, after this was done it boosted my both download and upload by about 5-7mb.

"Pringles cantenna"

Another thing i may try is to boost my usb adapter maybe  with a "pringles can", it works with the same principle as the parabolic reflector by increasing the amount of waves going in the right direction and focusing more incoming waves into the receiver.

Hopefully now will be able to post more often now that i can actually play something, i will keep you guys posted on my search for a better wireless...