booster for WIFI

[opas]

We have a WIFI box, but if one of our girls use it on their phone whilst someone else is on the computer both the user speeds slow right down. last week I saw advertised in the pub that comes weekly into our postbox , a signal booster for wifi.

Can anyone concur that these things do the job or will I just be wasting 30+ euros?

[mrob343]

We have a WIFI box, but if one of our girls use it on their phone whilst someone else is on the computer both the user speeds slow right down. last week I saw advertised in the pub that comes weekly into our postbox , a signal booster for wifi.

Can anyone concur that these things do the job or will I just be wasting 30+ euros?

I use this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoR0YhLXxFU

Bit expensive, but it works well !
You can buy them from Amazon France and fnac and its simple plug n play too.
Cheers

[pfrancis]

A booster does just that, it boosts the WIFI signal. Therefore you/your daughter will get a stronger signal. It will not speed things up at allm so may be a waste of 30 euro?

The speed is what it is. So if you pay for 5MB (Mega byte), you may actually get between 4 and 5 MB. That is speed, measured in MB.

If you pay for 1MB you may get 700/800KB (Kilo Bytes)

If you pay for 10MB you may get 9MB or so.

Just in case you are confusing range or strength of signal with speed. Two different things.

If you have paid for, say, 500KBPS (by most standards very slow), you may get 400KBPS. If one of you is using 200KBPS, that leaves 200 or less for other users. Very slow.

KBPS = Kilo Bytes per second
MBPS = Mega Bytes per second

So the only way to speed things up is:-

1. take it in turns to go online
2. pay your service provider more for more speed (measured in MB)

Hope this helps.

Paul.

[Allan]

Following on from what Paul said, a wifi network is generally much faster than a broadband connection so improving the wifi will rarely make any difference to overall speed. The main use of a wifi booster is to extend the range. If however you have a very weak signal then your network will slow down.

The easiest way to test it is to make sure that both devices are close to the router and showing strong signals, if that improves the speed then you might benefit from a booster.

Otherwise as Paul says, you need a faster broadband.

It also depends on what they are doing, if they are both downloading or watching videos then you should expect a reduction in speed.

[russell]

Wifi signal boosters boost the signal strength not directly the speed. However domestic routers use what is known as dynamic rate scaling. They have a maximum data rate of 54 Mbps (Bits per second not Bytes per second Paul) which is much faster than your typical 5 or 6 Mbps ADSL connection. When the signal gets weak or noisy or there is interference they will automatically slow down the data rate to avoid transmission errors. A typical router can slow the rate down to as low as 1 Mbps in poor signal conditions.

So, as Allan suggests, try with both machines close to the router or plug your main computer in using an Ethernet cable. If that doesn't improve things you need a faster internet connection or a less data hungry daughter!

What speed do you get here:
http://www.speedtest.net/ ?

There is always a difference between advertised and actual rates. The advertised rate is the raw data rate which includes parity and control bits which are there to ensure error free data transfer. The rate you get should be about eight tenths of the advertised rate.

Russell.