WiFi booster

Anyone recommend a cheap but reliable wifi booster? I get an intermittent signal in my study, and have to run a cable downstairs to the router a lot of the time. The distance is probably about 6m, and there are thick stone walls in the way. I don’t need anything particularly flash or speedy, and cost is an issue, but it would need to have a single ethernet port for the Pi. It would be good if I could plug it in inside the study, but how much better can I expect a booster to be at picking up the weak signal than my Mac? I currently get 1-2 bars on the little fan icon, which is too unreliable to use for any length of time.

I use the Vonets VAP11G. The older one was a pain to set up (needed XP), but the newer version has a built-in webserver for configuration. It works quite well, though I do have two suggestions:

1, buy a tiny 5V fan, stick that to the front. The chip inside runs hot, and I think last summer toasted my older model.

2, the Vonets can work as a WiFi repeater (for nearby wireless stuff). Turn this off. In weak signal conditions (you know, like when you’d want to have a repeater), it spent so long shouting on the same frequency as the router that ALL WiFi in my room just died. Even the PC, on its own WiFi dongle, dropped from ~250K/sec to maybe 500bytes/sec. You can disable the repeater in the config.

The Vonets will have its own IP address on the network so you can set it up in the router’s DNS so http://vonets/ will get to it. For directly attached equipment, it itself provides the alias http://vonets.cfg/ for setup. Otter might work, NetSurf does not. I don’t know, I plugged it into my PC for setup. Once done, it can be left to get on with things.

Thanks Rick. I think the repeater’s really what I’m after, though. I’ll have a look at the Vonets range, though by the sound of it your endorsement isn’t unequivocal :)