26 October 2011

Cheap and quick enhancing your wifi internet speeds in Canberra, with a wok.

| welkin31
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wok antenna

I am a newcomer to using wireless internet on a daily basis – I first tried wifi at motels, quickly learning that the signal varied greatly depending how close your room was to the source and there was also a variation within the room. Placing the modem up high usually helped get a good signal.

I had been with Iinet ADSL for a decade and grew tired of the daily dropouts – paying the line rental – decided rightly or wrongly last month to ditch Iinet and the landline phone and gave Virgin mobile broadband (wireless) a go. For several months I have been working at times in the boondocks of NSW and ended up buying a pre-paid Telstra mobile broadband USB modem – that way I could stay in a small motel that had no wireless internet but was nearer work. That modem has a small brass socket where you can attach an aerial – for example: www.crazysales.com.au

pigtail antenna connection

When the Virgin Wifi USB modem arrived there was little in the way of instructions about positioning the thing. I recall reading – “put it in your laptop bag”. I am sure there is better advice in their FAQ’s.

My speeds with the modem on the 20cm USB cable supplied were similar to my Iinet speeds as measured at http://www.speedtest.net/ – about 1.5Mb/s

I realise the Iinet connection had advantages of greater bandwidth.

I then attached a longer USB cable and put the modem on top of a bookcase – this got my speed up to 4Mb/s. I did some reading on the Whirlpool forums – http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/ masses of information there. That lead me to the NZ site – http://www.usbwifi.orconhosting.net.nz/ with many practical examples of how to DYI enhance wireless signals using cheap or scrap materials. That lead me to find an old wok and position it on a fan stand – up high near the ceiling – some sticky tape and wire and I experimented with it pointing in various directions. I quickly found the strongest signal was with the wok pointing at the aerial mast at the roundabout in Clarrie Hermes Drive between Horse Park Drive and Kelleway Avenue in Casey. Happens to be about 1km away as the crow flies.

wok antenna on fan stand

Once I homed the wok onto that aerial mast my speeds have been as high as 6.4Mb/s. I have a lot to learn about wireless internet – learning the implications of GPRS(slow), UMTS(fast), HSDPA(very fast) connections – my modem is connecting with UMTS at around 95% – whatever that means.

[ED – This article comes after Welkin31’s earlier post about speed dropouts. When he was talking about “wok antennas” we never dreamed he literally meant using a wok.]

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johnboy said :

For the pedants, the device pictured in the wok is a wifi router as well as a 3g receiver.

Not to be nitpicking… but ‘wifi’ should be ‘mobile broadband’ and even if the device is a wifi/3g router, the phrase ‘wifi internet’ is used in the wrong context.

Fortunately, everyone uses it in the wrong context, so most techies have learned people use the words interchangably.

How clever!

Now theres an example of lateral thinking. Wonder what it would be like with no brick wall between the WiFry and the BTS (remembering that USB can only be 3 or 5 meters total length – although a repeater would extend this).

Fasinating

Classified said :

Skidd Marx said :

I’m guessing you’re single.

Not for long after this…

What!?!!?

Hi there, you’re nice. Would you like come to my house and see how I use a wok to get better download speeds?

I do now yah sweet talking b*stard!!

Just cant see it happening myself somehow….. lol!

Patent time!

creative_canberran9:52 am 27 Oct 11

“learning the implications of GPRS(slow), UMTS(fast), HSDPA(very fast)”

Just to be clear, HSDPA is actually part of the UMTS standard, hence Telstra NextG uses both. The UMTS provides the protocol layer and the HSDPA (and now HDPA+) provide the date layer connext, a bit like the relationship between GSM (from which UMTS is evolved) and EDGE.

UMTS standard does have a data facility, but I’m not aware of any Australian carriers using that instead of the additional HSDPA layer. When the Telstra Connection manager says “UMTS”, it really means HSDPA.

creative_canberran9:51 am 27 Oct 11

“learning the implications of GPRS(slow), UMTS(fast), HSDPA(very fast)”

Just to be clear, HSDPA is actually part of the UMTS standard, hence Telstra NextG uses both. The UMTS provides and protocol layer and the HSDPA (and now HDPA+) provide the date layer connext, a bit like the relationship between GSM (from which UMTS is evolved) and EDGE.

UMTS standard does have a data facility, but I’m not aware of any Australian carriers using that instead of the additional HSDPA layer. When the Telstra Connection manager says “UMTS”, it really means HSDPA.

I’ve been working with high powered RF comms gear of all varieties for nearly 20 years now, only to realise that I’ve been wasting my energies, as it were.

I feel truly unworthy in the presence of such awesomeness.

This is quite simply the coolest thing ever.

Rawhide Kid Part31:47 pm 26 Oct 11

Henry82 said :

Deref said :

How did you work out how far in front of the wok the modem should be placed?

F = (D^2)/(16xC)

F= Focal point
D = Diameter of wok
C = centre depth

And don’t forget the angle (http://tinyurl.com/3tlgpb6) of the parabolic for best transmit / receive outcomes. Oops. Am I showing my true colours here?

Also dont forget for your 11.n devices to set security encryption to AES for 300mbps throughput.

Deref said :

How did you work out how far in front of the wok the modem should be placed?

F = (D^2)/(16xC)

F= Focal point
D = Diameter of wok
C = centre depth

I’ve been using the “windsurfer” ( http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/ ) for years on my wireless cards and routers which works very well. There are plenty of forums arguing the effectiveness of these, but from my experience it picks up far more signals.

Skidd Marx said :

I’m guessing you’re single.

Not for long after this…

For the pedants, the device pictured in the wok is a wifi router as well as a 3g receiver.

Rawhide Kid Part31:02 pm 26 Oct 11

M0les said :

First the congrats: It’s always good to see people hacking, regardless of how simple or finnicky.

Now the pedantry: This is not WiFi (802.11x), these things are 3G modems – different frequencies, power, ranges and applications (but whatever).

The parabolic (curved) shape of the wok (Actually it just looks like a frying-pan in the pix) is possibly not a factor in your case. Just having a large flattish metal object behind the dongle will likely be all you need (A ground-plane reflector). It’s a bit like putting a candle infront of a white wall or mirror vs a window: 2x the brightness with 1/2 the vieing-angle. If you can get a 90-degree inside-corner (a bit like a book opened-out to 90-degrees) conductor behind the dongle, you should get something like a 4x gain with 1/4 the “viewing angle”.

Also WiFi which operates in the 5Ghz range has a maxim transmitting range (outdoors) of 95 meters whereas the Phone Towers (3G) operate in the 2100MHz range and have an output range of around 26 square kilometers depending on the terrain, location (proximity to buildings etc) and power output.

I’m guessing you’re single.

WiFri is a better name than WokFi.

First the congrats: It’s always good to see people hacking, regardless of how simple or finnicky.

Now the pedantry: This is not WiFi (802.11x), these things are 3G modems – different frequencies, power, ranges and applications (but whatever).

The parabolic (curved) shape of the wok (Actually it just looks like a frying-pan in the pix) is possibly not a factor in your case. Just having a large flattish metal object behind the dongle will likely be all you need (A ground-plane reflector). It’s a bit like putting a candle infront of a white wall or mirror vs a window: 2x the brightness with 1/2 the vieing-angle. If you can get a 90-degree inside-corner (a bit like a book opened-out to 90-degrees) conductor behind the dongle, you should get something like a 4x gain with 1/4 the “viewing angle”.

Disinformation11:24 am 26 Oct 11

I’ve built 30dB plus wifi antennas out of cantennas feeding satellite TV dishes and found the focal point of the dish by sticking little bits of mirror tile onto the surface of the dish and then pointing it at the sun. The convergence point is the focal point. (Hey, the Wokfi wikipedia link even mentions this method)
What they don’t mention however, is that if you make a mount on the dish (or wok) that lets you point a straight rod or tube at the sun (for the least shadow) while you’re finding the focal point, you can have an extremely accurate sighting device for aiming the dish if you know where you want to (or have to) point it to make a link.

It’s called a WokFi, and they can be reasonably effective.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wokfi

The Cantenna is another similar device.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantenna

Vodafone should seriously consider offering a free wok with every 3G subscription.

🙂 Brilliant! Thanks Welkin31!

How did you work out how far in front of the wok the modem should be placed? I see you’ve used tape to hold it in position, but is there a cardboard tube or something behind the modem to hold it at the “focus”? (I realise that the wok isn’t a parabolic reflector so there won’t be an accurate focal point.)

We’d very much like to be the first port of call for canberra seeifixedit candidates.

This belongs on seeifixedit.com, not RiotACT…

I look forward to seeing someone using this approach for better mobile reception on Canberra’s streets soon.

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