Wrapping Your Router With Aluminum Foil Improves Wi-Fi Signal, Study Says

[C C]

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/215435...y-says.htm

EXCERPT: Don't laugh at neighbors who think aluminum foil can improve their Wi-Fi router's signal, because they might actually be right. Xia Zhou, an assistant professor of computer science at Dartmouth College, shared a research presentation in the Netherlands on Wednesday, Nov. 9, explaining how a customized reflector wrapped around a router's antennas can direct signals where they're most needed. Aside from increasing Wi-Fi signals, a reflector can also help to improve Wi-Fi router security, according to Zhou....

MORE: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/215435...y-says.htm

[stryder]

It's a little more complex than that. The idea of wrapping routers isn't particularly new. It was known in certain circles that it was possible to both boost signal strength and use wifi dongles as directional devices to find access points using nothing more than an empty Pringles tube as a shield. (In fact that's what people use to do [illegally I might add] when they wanted to access peoples wifi from outside their homes while sat in their cars etc.

So it's something that's been known and used since the late 1990's. A couple of years back I was living in a location that didn't have internet access, instead I had to have the internet access point placed a couple of hundred feet away which meant a wifi signal was extremely difficult to get through a standard wifi dongle. I ended up using a PoE wifi hub to act as a connection, and then an ethernet cable to the final destination to use the internet. I experimented with using "Tin foil" to try and reduce network noise from other networks and focus on my access point. This led to some juryrigged designs using the antenna's that were available and holes cut in some card.

[Yazata]

Mine work best as tinfoil hats. I need them whenever I read the internet, which typically involves wifi signals. Mysterious people out there are always trying to put crazy thoughts in my head.

Seriously though, wouldn't the shape of of the foil be important? You want it to be a reflector that bounces propagation going that way so that it adds to what's coming this way. If it was just absorbing the signal in unwanted directions, it would be more of a shield. It wouldn't make sense to put your router inside a Faraday cage.

It seems to me that a corner reflector or a parabolic reflector might work best if you want your wifi router's uhf signal to propagate directionally.