Easy, $1 Low-Tech Way to Increase Your Internet Connection Speed By 68%

This is original Bill Gronos material and could be very useful to you.

Today I increased my home cable company Internet connection speed 68% to 37431.2 Kbps, using nothing more than a $1 cable and a beer bottle filled with water.

37.4 Mb/sec -- that's 668 times a 56K dial-up and 124 times a typical DSL connection! -- for $1 and w/o having to make any changes to my PC settings??? And that it was super-easy?

I've NEVER seen a faster speed test result and I've measured lots of connections, including those at two universities. It is 80% of the speed of a full T3 connection! (T3: 44736 kbps)

Today I needed to download a 900MB file while in my home (MS Visual Studio Express 2008, plus all the stinking updates and patches for it), via WIFI, and needed to get the fastest connection possible. Repeat, via WIFI -- and passing through two brick walls!

I use a cheapo ($10 after rebate) USB WIFI adaptor for my desktop PC that looks like a thumb drive, with no external antenna. I went to a $1 store and got a 4' USB extender cable and attached the adaptor to it. Then I filled a 40oz beer bottle with water (for weight to keep the adaptor and cable steady), attached the adaptor/cable extension to the bottle with a rubber band and started aiming it in three dimensions while watching the WIFI strength meter app on my PC screen.

In the optimum position, I now had -64db signal strength, whereas I only had -79db -- and often worse -- before, when the adaptor was plugged directly into the USB port (these signal strengths are negative values, so lower is stronger).

For you non-techies, this was a gigantic 32 times increase in the signal strength (db - decibels - is a logarithmic scale, just like earthquakes are measured; calculation: 10 ^ {(79-64)/10} = 10^(1.5) = 31.6 times as strong.)

The below speed test screenshot is from a test run at the CNET website, http://reviews.cnet.com/7004-7254_7-0.html

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At this test site you enter your area code, run the test, and it tells you what providers can give you a faster connection.

NOTE THAT THE "FASTER PROVIDERS" COLUMN IS EMPTY, BECAUSE THIS IS IT!, there is no faster connection in Oklahoma City, 405 area code - AND THIS IS VIA WIFI!

The point I want to make is that you should fiddle with your desktop or laptop PC position even if it's a pain in the ass, as even a 3 db increase in signal strength means TWICE the signal strength. (OK, OK - for you nitpickers it's 1.995262315 times as strong: twice as strong would be a 3.01029996 db increase,)

Try aiming your laptop's direction and moving it several feet. Even if you have to drag your desktop PC's tower a few feet, place it on a stack of books, or align it a few degrees, it will be worth it. Stronger signal means less interference from your neighbor's WIFI router and 2.4GHz cordless phone, giving you far fewer dropped bit packets that your router would have to resend.

Below is a T(n) ref table. I do not have my own T3 connection, just a cable company Internet connection.

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T1, T1c, T2, T3, T4

T(n) Quick Overview
Some Electrical Characteristics for Tn
Cabling
co-directional
Mark
3.0 Vdc
Space
0 Vdc +/- 0.30 Vdc
Pulse width
648 ns +/- 15 ns
Encoding
AMI (bipolar) and B8ZS
Speed
T1: 1544 kbps +/- 50 ppm

T1c: 3152 kbps +/- 50 ppm

T2: 6312 kbps +/- 50 ppm

T3: 44736 kbps +/- 50 ppm

T4: 274760 kbps +/- 50 ppm