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Image Source: Patcoola 2018

2018, I was approached by a tourist living in the neighborhood. He will be living in Canada for six months and he couldn’t get internet service. He was unable to signup for an account due to not having a permanent address. He offered to pay for everything, however, he didn’t want to invest in proper equipment. The challenge was to get a WiFi single over 900ft, approximately a quarter of a kilometer away. I told him it was a long shot, however, it hasn’t been tried with modern routers. We were successful at 950 feet.

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Typically a house hold router provides 150ft with about 100ft realistically. The tourist told me that my service set identifier (SSID) was visible on his iPad where he was staying. Hearing that was the first hope for success. In the past, people had been able to make a connection with the use of a coffee-can, but the signal was very poor. I told him that it maybe possible with modern routers and it has never been documented this way before. It was exciting to try with TP-Link routers.

I used the TP-Link Archer C9 AC1900 wireless router and I knew of a feature called wireless distribution system (WDS). This was my first time using WDS and it was very exciting. We ordered another Archer C9 from Amazon for $100 CDN. When it arrived I setup WDS and used it as a bridge with my bedroom desktop for testing. My desktop received a solid 60MB/s transfer speed between two computers. It was amazing, and was I promised the router before he leaves. Now we needed the coffee-cans, longer the better.

The tourist dropped off two metal coffee bottles from the camping store. That day I cut off the tops of the bottles and cut a whole for the antenna. We were all set. Now it was a matter of pointing the coffee-cans in right direction. Once the coffee-cans were positioned, he was able to receive the maximum Internet speed able (15Mbps). It was unbelievable.

It worked perfectly. Unfortunately I couldn’t do any benchmarks and my internet service is too slow to be used as a benchmark. Never-the-less the experiment exceeded expectations. The TP-Link routers reached approximately 950 feet with the use of coffee bottles.

As for the tourist, he turned out to be untrustworthy in the end, but at least I didn’t lose anything.

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I don't always use the women's bathroom, but when I do, you can bet it really smells. If you like my blog, please consider donating.

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