Subscribing to a high-speed internet plan may be all well and good, but it won’t matter that much if there are places in your house where you can’t get any WiFi signal at all. WiFi behaves similarly to radio or light waves which means obstructions like walls or floors can affect the strength of the transmission as well as its reach.
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Generally, to boost your WiFi signal, your ISPs might suggest buying a WiFi extender which will increase the coverage of your WiFi. However, those devices aren’t cheap, and if you have a big space, you may need to fork out a significant amount of cash to reach every nook and cranny of your home.
Now, there is this nifty tech hack which may solve your WiFi problems without having to hurt your wallet. Some tech experts suggest using aluminum foil to direct your WiFi signal and increase its signal strength to those areas of your home which the WiFi cannot reach.
The setup is simple. You get a sheet of aluminum foil, curve it so that it looks like a C-shape, and then place it behind your router. Make sure that the shiny side of the aluminum foil faces inward toward the router as it will be the part that reflects the WiFi signal’s beams. Point it toward the direction of the dead zone in your home, and see the tech magic unfold.
Apparently, aluminum foil isn’t the only material that can have this effect. James McQuiggan, a tech expert, suggests that you can also use soda cans and beer cans as well as other metals like copper baking sheets. As long as the curved, shiny part of the material is faced toward the direction you want to boost the wireless signal, it should work.
You might be wondering if this is a myth or not, and that’s understandable. Researchers from Dartmouth University actually tested the hack, and they found that it helped boost their wireless signals by up to 55.1% in certain spots. Just as much as the aluminum foil hack boosted the signal toward the direction it was pointed, it also reduced the signal strength by up to 63.3% in the areas where the signal was redirected from.
Granted, the Dartmouth experiment was in a controlled environment, and they were able to match the specifications of the router and aluminum foil to the size of the room. So, results may vary for much less controlled environments. Things like the size of your space, the number and type of obstructions, as well as your internet plan can affect the effectiveness of this hack.
(Image credit: Mykola/Kolya Korzh; Misha Feshchak/Unsplash)
Source: neatorama