How to build wifi

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Create a Cheap Wi-Fi Antenna at Home: DIY Guide
Community Q&A
How to build a 5-acre WiFi network: cheap, reliable, long-range wireless points make anything possible
The basics of point-to-point (PTP) and point to multi-point (PTMP)

Create a Cheap Wi-Fi Antenna at Home: DIY Guide

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Sometimes, your Wi-Fi signal just doesn’t reach where you want it to reach. You’ve seen wireless adapters at the store, but they can cost a lot more than you want to spend. We’ll show you a way to build a directional Wi-Fi antenna using off-the-shelf parts, no new software, and without opening your computer case. Get a significant signal boost for about $30 USD.

You’ll need a USB Wi-Fi LAN dongle for your computer, even if you have onboard Wi-Fi.
You’ll also need a USB passive extension cable, which you can find cheap at many retailers.
Attach the dongle and extension cable to a mesh sieve or other dish-shaped mesh metal item, then connect the extension cable to your computer.

For best compatibility, get one that includes the 802.11b and 802.11g standards.
The shape of the dongle is important. For cost-effectiveness, look for a small thumb-shaped device. Larger «squashed mouse» models (~$50 – 60 USD) are generally more sensitive and powerful. Although they may be harder to mount, they perform better in more demanding setups.

The antenna is directional, so you’ll need to position it so it has a direct line of sight view of the wireless access point. Make sure your cable is long enough to position it where you need it, up to a maximum of 15 feet (4.6 m) (5m).
You can link multiple extension cables together if you need.
Active USB extenders (~$10 USD) allow further cable runs, which may even allow elevated outdoor antenna placement.

Other options include sieves, steamers, pot lids, and lamp shades—as long as they are dish-shaped and metal. Any parabolic piece of metal mesh will work—bigger means a better signal, but harder to carry around.
Larger options include discarded DirectTV dishes or mesh-covered umbrellas, and although these should give more signal boost, mounting difficulties, and wind resistance tend to make about 12 inch (30 cm) (300mm) diameter the most practical.
Flexible stalk desk lamps allow these to be neatly mounted & positioned.

You want the dongle at the focal point «hot spot» apex of the dish—radio signals come in and bounce toward the center, a few fingers above the surface of the dish.
The best dongle location spot can be found by simple experiments. One aiming method involves covering the dish with aluminum foil and watching it reflect sunshine—the spot with the most light is the dish’s hot spot.
You may need a short support stick to get the dongle off the surface of the dish into this position.
Alternative support methods use string tied across the face of the dish like a spider web, hollowed-out plastic garden hose fittings, or even chopsticks!

Plug in your antenna. Insert the male end of the USB extension cable into your computer, and set that as your Wi-Fi card using your network settings.

Your Wi-Fi antenna is very directional, so getting the aim right is important. Pointing the dish toward the remote antenna is the best place to start, although stray reflections from buildings etc may sometimes give good signals from unexpected directions.
You can use an inexpensive hand-held laser pointer to verify that you are aimed right at the wireless transmitter. It’s great fun with your cat when you’re done surfing the web!

A program like NetStumbler for Windows or KisMAC for Mac can greatly help by giving you graphical readouts of signal strengths.
Compared with inbuilt Wi-Fi adapters, which are usually down at desk level and can easily be screened by metal walls, partitions, vegetation, or your body, even a simple elevated «woki» setup like this can boost signals and extend ranges enormously!

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The antenna merely amplifies the WiFi signal, it will still require an existing wireless Internet access point.

Yes, I believe it will work if your TV has a USB port and you know how to connect your TV to different WiFi signals.

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How to build a 5-acre WiFi network: cheap, reliable, long-range wireless points make anything possible

Last year I moved to a house with some property, and it had a separate garage a hundred feet or so away from the main house. At first, I tried Netgear Orbi mesh networking points to connect them but I couldn’t reliably get one wireless point in my house’s window to connect to the other point in the garage. So I started doing some research, and going down some rabbit holes.

Remember 20 years ago when Maker Magazine was new and all about building pringles-can wifi antennas? While the idea is the same, there’s a ton of great, cheap, reliable, fast wireless points these days that have taken that concept further. Plus, you can buy them on Amazon and set them up easily with your computer or phone.

Keep in mind this is all about local networking. It’s about making sure any spot in your house can talk to any other spot on your property without having to run cables or bury wires, by using small wireless antennas that look like tiny satellite dishes. And while my five acres isn’t entirely bathed in WiFi, every building has a WiFi point and coverage inside and around it, covering all the places I occupy.

The basics of point-to-point (PTP) and point to multi-point (PTMP)

It helps to know some terms and definitions so you can make sense of research if you want to go down this path.

PTP connections are simple as they’re just two points that span a distance. You stick ethernet from your outside internet connection into one wireless point, and then beam it to over to another wireless point across some distance and ethernet coming out of that second point can run another wifi point or be connected directly to a laptop. Just imagine the wireless link is an invisible ethernet cable.

These are ideal for sending your internet out to your backyard or to a shed or to a pool or between two office buildings. The equipment required is pretty cheap (about $85 for each point) and once you aim them at each other, they can run for months (and years) without a hiccup, giving you 100-300Mbps speeds (which can be faster than even a buried ethernet cable in some cases). They support faster connections over short distances, but can support links up to ten miles away if you have clear line-of-sight (no trees or buildings) between them. It’s kind of remarkable this cheap stuff works so well, but it does.

The wild thing is, all this equipment cost about $1500 total. If you’ve been in the tech industry since the dotcom boom, you might remember conferences or companies paying $50k-$100k or more for this kind of tech 10-20 years ago, but now it’s down to a couple hundred bucks to less than a couple thousand to cover land the size of a small office campus.

Here’s what my main house’s omni-directional connection looks like installed.

Here is what each building’s wireless point looks like installed. I’ve circled the small wireless antenna panel on the ones that weren’t obvious. Each of these $49 M2 points are just a few inches across by about 8 inches high.

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