Double Your Internet Speed

[dave]

CB, please check his math... although I have no idea why he chose to give a mathematical proof using Kirchoff's Law and Gaussian theory.



He could have just said the signal radiates from the primary to the secondary cable and thereby utilizes the surfaces of both sets of strands.

I guess the speed increase comes from less re-tries because it's a cleaner connection? I can't imagine the basic bit transfer goes any faster (higher freq.) Although that is possible. I seem to remember logic circuits that would self adjust frequency depending up error rate.

The SpeedTest.net test seems to prove quite a dramatic increase in download and one hell of increase in upload speed.


Here's an even simpler way to increase speed, this time in that bottleneck between your PC (or laptop) and the router with over the air signals. This idea is really cool and it's what I need for my Netbook. Increase WiFi speed.



By the way, that's a really neat TenTec amateur radio Model 570 "Century 21" transceiver from the 1970's behind him. I had one I used often at night on 3.5 MHz. before I sold my "boatanchor" collection when I moved south. I got about 50 watts out of it on CW (Morse Code.)

[clarencebunsen]

His proof made no sense to me. There are several Kirchoff's Laws but none have anything to do with information transfer. His work was done in the 19th century and mostly dealt with conservation issues, conservation of current in a node, conservation of energy in EM radiation, that sort of thing. If you see an "I" in any of Kirchoff's equations it indicates current not "information content."

The amount of current has no particular effect on the data transfer rate. There has to be enough voltage to trigger the detection circuit. I really don't think the last 5 feet of cable between your modem and computer is a major speed bottleneck. I see my speed change throughout the day as people sign on and off. My cables don't change.

The typical CAT5 cable has 4 sets of twisted pairs. Wrapping another CAT5 around it with random twists would not couple well for signal transmission, I would think it just as likely to increase cross-talk between pairs as to increase signal transmission. Measuring any signal transmitted in the secondary cable would be a challenge.

My BS detector went off as soon as he talked about taping over the connectors on his secondary cable. The electrical tape would have no effect on radiated signals.

[Ralph]

This made my night! I've never seen such a load of crap in my life.
I wonder how many people ran out and bought an extra cable to do this with?

First rule of computer programming applies here......GIGO!!!

[dave]

I haven't tried the piggy back cable lash-up to increase speed between a cat5 connected PC and router ... which admittedly is theoretically suspect. I didn't listen to much of the "math" explanation on the video because the presenter didn't sound like he knew what he was talking about. I remember Kirchoff's law from an elementary point of view of voltages summed around a circuit, but I never studied Gaussian Theory. You might possibly use Kirchoff to show that voltages (and therefore loads) went "elsewhere," but I don't think he was going in that direction.

I just finished trying the whisk on the antenna, and although I did not get as stunning results as on the video, I got about a 50 percent speed increase from netbook to router.

Here's how I conducted the experiment. (Just noting download speeds).

I first did a couple of runs on speedtest.net from my cable connected desktop pc and got about 11 mbps of speed. Rather slow, but it's Saturday and the Internet may be busy. I have seen speeds from speedtest.net as high as 20 from San Diego on my connection here. Anyway, today it's 11 mbps down the pipe. I kept the connection inside South Carolina to reduce the introduction of any wide area effects on Internet speed.

I then put the netbook right next to the router and did a couple of runs of speedtest.net. Got about 10.5 mbps. Not surprising, because there should be little over-the-air loss when the netbook and router are right next to each other. This speed figure results mostly from the connection through the Internet, with an evident small loss between netbook via wifi to the router.

I then took the netbook to the other end of the house away from the router, where I got an average of about 3.2 mbps. This is what my son was complaining about when he visited over Thanksgiving and he used his laptop in the kitchen.

Next, at the router end of the house, I carefully placed the whisk over the router antenna. Back in the kitchen, I tried a couple of more speedtest.net runs and got an average speed of 4.9 mpbs.
I took the whisk off and the next speed test ran at 3.1. With the whisk back on it ran at 5.1

The whisk had a definite effect and provide a roughly 50 percent increase in download speed.

My hypothesis would be that the whisk forms (or part of it does) a reflector element very similar to that of a Yagi beam antenna, a chapter of RF transmission physics well understood since Mr. Yagi invented antennas with reflector and director elements.

You might notice that sometimes a portable radio or TV will experience an increase in reception quality when it is near a large metal object (if it's not grounded, as beams are in office buildings, which is the reason why such structures act like Faraday cages and you barely have any reception inside them.)

It's important to note that the actual transmission speed doesn't change, but I suspect it's the throughput that is changing due to a decrease in the error rate when the signal reception is stronger.

That would be the simplest explanation. However, there is a possibility that the transmission speed could indeed be changing, as I mentioned in the post above. There ARE circuits that decrease their transmission speed when error conditions escalate (and vice versa). If I remember correctly, the intention of that design is to slow down and give back wasted resources to the processor so it can disburse the cycles to other virtually simultaneous functions that the processor is also supporting at that time.

Whatever the reason, the whisk idea does work.

[Ralph]

I imagine a piece of tinfoil would work just as well if not better, after all.....it is an antenna and we both know the quirks that they possess!

If you are noticing a slow or slower than normal speed from your router, whether hard wired or wi-fi, reboot the router by going through the browser connection.

Occasionally we have to reboot ours, the new one and the old ones we had as well. Usually solves the problem and I bet you speed goes up.

[clarencebunsen]

Antenna boosters are always fun.



I've never tried running Speedtest at different locations to see how much variations. I'll probably wait until next summer to get back yard and garage numbers.