• Rose56@lemmy.caEnglish
    18·
    18 hours ago

    I did this back in 2010-13, to get better internet in my house! It was a video from a youtube, where he used cereal box with aluminum.

  • Clearwater@lemmy.worldEnglish
    76·
    1 day ago

    I unironically do something similar to this. In my area, the only options are a dogshit local WISP, Starlink/other satellite, or (where possible) cellular.

    I am one of the “lucky” people who are able to use cell for my internet, however whether it’s the cell company having a craptastic network, software/hardware bugs on the my customer equipment, or a combination of both, there is only ONE cell tower I can connect to which yields a useful connection.

    All other towers result in the equipment failing to connect to the tower, connecting but failing to get an internet connection, or only yielding download speeds 5Mbit of less.

    I have found that by shoving sheet metal around my ISP’s equipment, I can quite easily block off the non-functional towers and ensure they’re never connected to. I don’t think speeds are any better, but it does help with reliability.

    • justme@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      15·
      1 day ago

      I wonder if it’s not only boxing the other towers but also boring the signal to the one you are aiming at, because you put a big mirror behind

      • Clearwater@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        13 hours ago

        I have tried that. I have a dish taken from a directional WiFi antenna. When placed behind the gateway, it sometimes increases speeds, sometimes hurts speeds, and sometimes does nothing. I found it a bit too inconsistent, and a bit too ugly, to be used permanently. If I had a proper mounting solution, I might have gotten it tuned just right, however at that point I would rather just buy and mount external antennas to hook into the gateway.

        My exact deployment today actually doesn’t even have anything behind the gateway. That is just because for my specific case, all the towers it can reach are within a roughly 90 degree field of view. To block the bad ones, I really only need to block off a few sections of the window it’s sitting near.

        • Test_Tickles@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          4 hours ago

          You might want to search on the word cantenna. Helped set up a cantenna for a friend’s parents once. They lived in a lake house for a few years, but they were in a dead zone for pretty much everything. They had a cell booster that would occasionally get a single if luck was on your side, but once we set up the cantenna on the booster, they had a steady signal .

      • knightly the Sneptaur@pawb.socialEnglish
        9·
        24 hours ago

        Both to some degree, realistically. I used an old collander as a signal reflector for a wifi dongle on the end of a USB extension cable and was able to boost the signal up to about 4x, or maybe half the range of the purpose-built and highly directional Yagi antenna I eventually bought to replace that kludge.

  • Zerush@lemmy.mlEnglish
    16·
    21 hours ago

    I have put my router in a 4 m parabol antenna, with this the signal has also improved somewhat, it only prevents me from using the sofa that is next to the router.

  • zxqwas@lemmy.worldEnglish
    99·
    1 day ago

    It will probably reflect some of the radiation. Wifi reception will be poorer behind the aluminium and possibly better in front.

    A cheapskates version of a directional antenna.

    • Raltoid@lemmy.worldEnglish
      40·
      1 day ago

      Indeed, although this type of thing was more common with older wifi generations, so I’m not surprised kids these days wont know.

      For example: We cut the top off an old beer can, poked a hole and stuck it onto the antenna to have stable download speeds across a courtyard.

      • Mostly_Gristle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        1 day ago

        I remember like 15 or 20 years ago the popular thing was printable papercraft doohickeys that you’d cut out and glue together with aluminum foil on the backside that were like little satellite dishes that mounted on the antennas that were supposed to boost/aim your wifi signal. I gave them a try, but if they made a difference it wasn’t big enough to be noticeable.

      • Clot@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        18 hours ago

        We used to do this with antennas for tvs (those circular ones) It used to work in rains too

      • Natanox@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        7·
        1 day ago

        Reminds me of the diy antenna made out of copper wire, an empty CD spool and a single CD on its back. Those antennas could work as far as 1km if there was no obstruction, or 400m through light obstructions. It was awesome.

    • fullsquare@awful.systemsEnglish
      7·
      21 hours ago

      pringles can is too small for 2.4ghz cantenna, it’s near cutoff frequency but just barely, you need 10cm-ish diameter can or shorter 16cm-ish can

      • Pencilnoob@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        23 hours ago

        I once made one of these with a bigger can and mounted it on an old 10’ satellite dish. Managed to get Wi-Fi across several thousand yards without issue

            • fullsquare@awful.systemsEnglish
              2·
              21 hours ago

              i’ve used the same (800ml can) and this one works well. cookie tin is 15cm dia 8cm tall and it works, but size can vary a bit. you can copy or scale slightly designs of 13cm band antennas

  • LostXOR@fedia.io
    182·
    1 day ago

    This can actually be beneficial if your router is right at the corner of your house. The foil acts as a reflector for some of the radiation that would’ve been wasted, and thus improves the signal quality within your house.

    • zout@fedia.io
      49·
      1 day ago

      To actually be beneficial as a reflector, the foil would need to be a specific distance from the antenna, which should be a certain fraction of the wavelength. Source: I used to make parabolic reflectors out of milk cartons about twenty years ago.

        • osaerisxero@kbin.melroy.org
          18·
          1 day ago

          MU-MIMO (Multiple-User Multiple In Multiple Out) does [math] to assist in directing signal to multiple clients at once via multipathing, which this reflector would fuck with the math of in (I think) a detrimental way. Regardless of its impact on that technology, higher-end wifi phy rates (the negotiated modulation rate between 2 stations, i.e. the wifi access point/router and your phone) would get shredded by having a reflector bouncing signal between the multiple antennas, forcing clients into artificially lower speeds for a [potential] marginal boost to gain.

          This stopped being a helpful thing to do somewhere around the transition between wifi 4 and 5 (802.11n --> 802.11ac)

          • suburban_hillbilly@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            9 hours ago

            What if I’m doing it to block signals from roughly half the 60 other APs with half a dozen devices each I have broadcasting nearby?

            • osaerisxero@kbin.melroy.org
              1·
              6 hours ago

              Then it’ll do literally exactly the same thing as above, but with a lower noise floor than otherwise. Whether lowering airtime contention (or, rather, lowering airtime contention for one station while not doing so for others, unless you’re talking about putting a layer of foil wallpaper up on a wall lmao) in exchange for all that is a net benefit for you, I couldn’t say. If it’s all wifi6 or higher though, I wouldn’t bother.

          • keepcarrot [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
            11·
            1 day ago

            I remember going to a LAN that got its wifi from a local library via collander-boosting. Those were the days, and carrying around CRT monitors was sort of like exercise

    • Glitterbomb@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      19 hours ago

      I stumbled onto these on Amazon last night actually. The user submitted video reviews are insane. I was screaming. I got to the head scarf that blocks the 5Gs and I had to stop.

      EMF BLOCKING BASEBALL CAP