Reaching A Far Away Wifi Signal

Sibs_1 · May 23, 2020

Greetings everyone,

I am currently at the lake setting up for the season and the owners have a “common” building with showers, washing machines, etc. The have an open wifi network that everyone is allowed to use. Our trailer is situated just far enough away that sometimes are devices can see the network, and sometimes they can not. On a rare occasion I can even connect to the network, but it’s very spotty.

I don’t think a repeater is going to work, as it would only repeat the already poor signal. Is there some sort of dish/antenna that works for wifi that we can put on the roof of the trailer, and connect to that? Is there anything we can do to improve our signal strength? Thank you

paddy-stone · May 23, 2020

IMO it might be a better idea to ask the owners if you could pay something towards upgrading their wifi network. They could have a long range antenna added for a pretty cheap amount for example. It might be worth asking anyway.

Falcon1986 · May 23, 2020

39 minutes ago, Sibs_1 said:

Greetings everyone,

I am currently at the lake setting up for the season and the owners have a “common” building with showers, washing machines, etc. The have an open wifi network that everyone is allowed to use. Our trailer is situated just far enough away that sometimes are devices can see the network, and sometimes they can not. On a rare occasion I can even connect to the network, but it’s very spotty.

I don’t think a repeater is going to work, as it would only repeat the already poor signal. Is there some sort of dish/antenna that works for wifi that we can put on the roof of the trailer, and connect to that? Is there anything we can do to improve our signal strength? Thank you

Provided you're allowed to use the WiFi and have clear line-of-sight to the wireless AP (i.e. no obstructions), you can probably mount a Ubiquiti Nanostation facing the source, then wire it to your own wireless AP to distribute WiFi locally.

Since, at this range, the 2.4GHz signal will be the strongest (even if a 5GHz signal is being broadcast), a Nanostation M2 will work the best. Then you can follow the instructions in Ubiquiti's guide on how to set it up properly. This should work for simple web browsing, e-mail and light streaming; not much more.