Improving Indoors Wi-Fi Reception?

VirtualUK asks: "I was given a WiFi base station and PCMCIA card for my laptop as a Christmas present so that I could read slashdot...urm I mean work, in any room in the house. When I read the manual it stated lofty figures of being able to work up to hundreds of feet inside office environments, so I felt that it would be more than capable of being able to allow me to stay connected in my tiny house. It seems however that the WiFi gods are against me as I tap this posting in the next room to the WiFi base station, a mere 20-30 feet away, just regular so-thin-I-can-hear-an-ant-fart walls, no kryptonite, no lead cladding and yet still I struggle to get a constant connection. I've found that shifting the laptop to face different directions sometimes helps, but as should it be this hard at such short range? Is there anything I can do to make my WiFi work better in a house environment?"

Suboptimal PCMCIA card design?

[Nathan Ramella]

If you notice the orientation of your pcmcia card, your radio signals are radiating out at a 90 degree angle from what would be optimal for talking to your AP.

Could be part of the problem.. Try turning your laptop 90 degress onto it's side. :)

Filing Cabinets?

[jayrtfm]

I had the same problem at a friend's house. Turned out it was a few filing cabinets that would block the signal when the ethernet adaptor (SMC2670W) was placed on the floor.

Re:Faraday.

[aminorex]

I also have lousy wifi inside my house. Not quite so bad
when using a dlink dwl-650+ with it's proprietary coding as
using an orinoco card, but still nothing like what I've seen
in office environments. Your faraday cage comment caught
my attention, because my house has steel siding. I wonder
if the walls are some sort of resonant cavity, creating
feedback interference.

Re:Laptop Antenna

[DiSKiLLeR]

Wierd :)

I have an airport card in my powerbook, but i use an orinico card in the pcmcia slot because it has 3 to 4x the range!

The airport card barely works around the house.

The orinoco card works down to the street, past the 4 units out the front (we're a house behind 4 units).

Really amazing how much further that little orinoco can go. And i have several orinocos (gold, bronze, white), they all have that range.

Airport sucks.

D.

Depending on the

[Y Ddraig Goch]

age of your house you may have metal studs in the walls. This could cause problems. All of the other sugestions are great too. You may just have to play around with the position of the WAP and it's antenae.

Watch out for mirrors

[TravelSizedMonkey]

I've had to troubleshoot this one a few times and I know that a mirror can seriously screw with wireless reception. It was a simple setup; a student had a laptop on a desk directly across from the door to their dorm room. With the door open, the signal was perfect, full strength. With the door closed, the signal was gone. On the back of the door? A tall mirror. Taking down the mirror solved the problem.

Aluminium foil?

[TheLink]

Has anyone tried sticking pieces of aluminium foil on the corners of their room or wherever that works?

The idea is so the signals between the AP and your WiFi card have a better chance of bouncing off the foil and around walls and other obstacles. If you can find some inconspicuous areas it might not look too ugly.

This apparently helps for IR remote controls. Not sure if it works for WiFi.