Apparently my kitchen is a faraday cage

[AndrewLyle]

Can macrumors help me extend my home wifi?

I am having trouble getting internet in my kitchen, which is once floor down and about 50 feet away from my airport extreme. Standing next to the router i get upwards of 20Mbps, but in the kitchen i get < 1Mbps. I also have an airport express n that i have tried putting in the kitchen and in the adjacent rooms. I set it up to extend my network and i can get a green light in all the rooms, but the internet speeds are not noticeably effected. Sometimes I get up to 6Mbps with or without the airport express.

I understand kitchens are the worst for wifi signals, it is there anything i can do before i run a wire the whole distance?

EDIT: If i do run a wire, can i hook up the airport express to broadcast a wired signal inside the kitchen? I should get a healthy signal then right?

 

[balamw]

You might also have a noise source. Microwaves in particular share the 2.4 GHz spectrum Wifi uses.

If you do run a wire it should help, but noise would make that less effective.

Can you try 5GHz or another channel?

B

 

[42streetsdown]

50 feet is pretty far away, i don't know if there is too much you can do. i get crap signal at 50 feet too.

 

[nateo200]

EDIT: If i do run a wire, can i hook up the airport express to broadcast a wired signal inside the kitchen? I should get a healthy signal then right?

Yeah that should work though your signal loss sounds a bit extreme. I've gotten wifi to broadcast pretty damn far with just a standard linksys WRT54G I would try putting the airport express on 5ghz the higher frequency might make things work but the 2.4Ghz band is known for massive congentions (see microwave ovens, bluetooth, baby monitors and random kids toys). Only problem is if you have an iPhone 4 it won't pick up the 5Ghz band, I'm not sure if the airport extreme can broadcast both simultaneously but I would look into that. If your router has antenna's that stick out point them down (see my attached photo). Generally routers have antenna's that make the radiation pattern look like so:

That picture would be when the antenna is sticking straight up like a tree. Put it on its side and the "Donut" becomes stronger at a farther distance because the red part is "aimed" downward where you need it. Place the router up high and have those antennas pointed down like my attachment below and see how it goes.


If that doesn't work I would get one of those wifi channel analysier apps either on your phone or on your mac and see what channels are most in use. Channel 6 is usually the default router channel so everyone broadcasts on that. Get enough routers shouting on channel 6 and eventually you'll have a full signal but its so distorted (you can't see it but your devices wifi can't hear because its just a mess) that nothing can get transferred. Try going to either channel 1 or 12 (other channels just over lap...).