DIY ways to boost Wi-Fi signal?

Hi everyone!
First off, I’d like to ask the admin to please keep this thread open until Friday—I’m really hoping to find some kind of help here...

Smith has a router at home, but the signal barely reaches 10 meters. He’s got a room upstairs and says the connection keeps dropping, it's incredibly slow, and the signal strength is always bottomed out.
Here’s the catch: there’s a building about 150-200m away (a local fire station) where a group of people needs to connect to his router. We need to boost that tiny 10-meter range to cover 200m...

Is there any gear available that I could pick up today or tomorrow? They're hosting a paintball tournament this Saturday, so having reliable internet is pretty essential for them.
To bridge that 200-$83 🙂

THANKS TO ANYONE WHO CAN HELP OUT! 🙂

I’m not really sure if you can actually jump from 10 meters to 200 meters...
maybe try building a cantenna, but you’d have to point it exactly where you want the better signal to go for it to even work.

Do you think the TL-WN7200ND might actually help out here?

Maybe that USB adapter would help boost the signal in the upstairs bedroom, but as for reaching all the way out to the local fire station? If we added another zero to that distance, we might actually have a chance at solving something.

Maybe something along these lines:

link

(I'm honestly not sure if this specific model is actually any good—I just grabbed the first one I found as an example)

Another way to handle this might be picking up some directional antennas—though you'd need to make sure your wireless cards actually support external antenna connections.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/wireless-wlan-antenna-example-link

(I'm not saying this specific one is any good, I'm just using it as an example)

I ran into the exact same headache, and this was the fix that actually worked for me:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Wireless-N30...:X:AAQ:US:1123

I share a Wi-Fi connection with my neighbor and the signal was absolute trash. This thing has two detachable antennas you can swap out for beefier directional ones—whatever works for you—and you can run it as a router or a repeater. Setup is a breeze, plus it’s packed with advanced settings like bandwidth limiting and stuff. It runs on full duplex too, so you don't get that annoying speed drop when you connect... it's only about $30 and shows up at your door in a week or so.

Honestly, couldn't be happier.

...I’d never touch something like that with a ten-foot pole... I just hope it actually lives up to the price tag, because honestly, it looks like your run-of-the-mill gadget with zero better alternatives out there. It's just "made in China," and let's be real, those marketing gurus just cooked up that "General Electric" title to sound fancy... meanwhile, the actual power is only 100mW. LOL

It doesn't matter what the name is or if it's "General Electric"... what matters is whether you can actually swap out the antennas for higher gain ones. Routers with those kinds of options run you anywhere from $400 to $200 around here—and even then, they're a pain to find. This cheap junk from China has been running for two years now and works just fine...

Jeffrey Moore4 said:I ran into some pretty much identical issues, and this was the exact fix I used to get everything sorted out:

I picked up a similar router because my signal is basically non-existent on the first and second floors, but honestly, it didn't really boost anything for me. The connection is fine on the ground floor, but once you hit the upper levels, it dies—probably because of these thick walls in my house. Can someone tell me where I can actually buy those high-gain antennas and how the hell I swap them out with the ones currently attached?

Ever tried laying those router antennas flat? Like, pointing them horizontally instead of up? You might actually get double the signal strength on your floor.

Think of those little stick antennas on your router like a lightbulb. They don't just shoot light straight up or down; they cast this glow in a big circle around them. Most of that signal is pushing out sideways, while there’s pretty much nothing happening directly above or below the tip.

If you can unscrew that little antenna thing from the router, just swap it out for a different one—they’re all standard fits anyway. You could even run an extension coaxial cable if you wanted... You can pick up antennas and cables pretty much anywhere online. I'll shoot you a DM with the link to the guy I used for my gear; his stuff is actually decent

Thanks for the tips! I ended up moving my router to the second floor, and now I’ve got great signal all over the house.