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Comment by mediocrejoker | Hacker News Reader

This makes the antenna more directional. It increases the range in one direction while decreasing it in every other direction, so I'm not sure how well this would work for most people without relocating the router/AP.

That being said, it's a clever bit of engineering.

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Given that it's only somewhat directional, this would actually be useful for the common case that the AP sits in a corner of a one-story house. No sense sending all that RF energy outside, so direct it inside.

> the common case that the AP sits in a corner of a one-story house

I was going to make it the centerpiece of the living room but my girlfriend vetoed that.

When you upgrade from consumer-grade equipment into dedicated APs, they start looking more like something you can put into the center of your living room without being ashamed of it.

The Unifi APs for example look like oversized smoke detectors. They have obnoxious blue LEDs like seemingly all modern equipment, but you can turn them off and then it emits no light at all, and fits quite well into the living room when mounted on the ceiling.

Mikrotik has been moving in this direction as well. This sucker [1], while unfortunately 2.4 GHz only, is an inconspicuous 3.5" white circle you can stick on your ceiling.

[1] https://routerboard.com/RBcAPL-2nD

My current (rental) place has the router and AP in one corner of the apartment, so signal strength at the other end is terrible. Is there a better (cheap but effective) option than this?

You can try adding a parabolic (or circular) reflector: http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template/

As with the original link, the antenna is directional (and since it's a reflector, probably even more directional), so you lose out on flexibility. It'll be quite good if you don't plan on moving the other point, though.

Better is to get a WDS bridge (wireless repeater). A high gain antenna (higher than in article) won't work well in the "long house" scenario because two clients may not be able to hear each other and may thus collide. (RTS/CTS is supposed to fix this but it relies on clients choosing to use it.) Unfortunately with WDS, the bridge must be the same brand as the AP (which itself must support WDS), so you might be stuck purchasing two new pieces of hardware.

But if the clients are all near each other, you have some money to spend (~$100), and don't mind being stuck with one band (2.4 GHz or 5 GHz), I'd recommend one of these:

https://routerboard.com/RBSXTG-2HnD

https://routerboard.com/RBSXTG-5HPnD-SAr2

https://routerboard.com/RBSXTG-5HPacD-SA

They're really meant for outdoor installations but they work well for indoors with a cluster of clients far from the AP.

I bought a WiFi extender for this and works perfectly. I don't know why I didn't do this earlier. Mine is a Xiaomi one for $9.

This would be great if you lived on a boat, then you could have a wifi router on the shore/marina with signal directed at your boat.

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