Well, friends, I’m sorry to report that unless you’re an engineering genius or are willing to take apart your iPod Touch to connect an external WiFi antenna (they do not provide an externally accessible port for this), there’s not much you can do at the iPod end to significantly improve its WiFi performance without negatively impacting the portability and usability of the iPod Touch. In fact, you can get far better results by modifying your WiFi network as follows:
Keep In Line Of Sight
What you can do with relative ease though, and what I have done in fact, is to assure that the iPod Touch is always in line-of-sight of the WiFi access point (WAP). It works most flawlessly when you’ve got it in the same room as your WAP. But if you’re using the Touch outside, then ideally, you’d want to place your WAP outside as well, or at least, to put an antenna out there that’s connected to the WAP. Avoid trees in the line between the WAP and the iPod Touch if possible. But don’t worry if you can’t; the signal still gets through the trees, though they will weaken it somewhat depending on their density. So, trees will reduce how far away from the WAP you can go without losing the WiFi signal.
Use Directional Antennas
Still though, even with a full-power (1 watt) WAP, you’ll do well if you get continuous WiFi connectivity beyond 300 Ft. with omni directional antennas on your WAP. Now you could buy directional, high-gain parabolic or yagi antennas and point these in the direction you’d like the best WiFi service. I haven’t actually tried this yet due to the cost of the devices, lightening arresters, and cables. But research indicates that such antennas can dramatically increase the strength and range of the signal in the direction you point them.
Keep Antenna Cables As Short As Possible
Should you decide to employ external antennas of any type, it’s imperative at WiFi frequencies (2.4 Ghz.) to use no more antenna cable between the access point and the antenna than you have to. At these frequencies, antenna cables reduce the signal that reaches the antenna by a ghastly amount if more than a few meters long.
Make a Repeater
Or you could purchase another WAP and configure it as a WiFi repeater, and place it where you want good service. As long as the repeater gets a reliable signal from the original (root) WAP, it will repeat well. I got some great success with this technique (discussed here). Keep in mind though that the presence of a repeater on your WiFinetwork will effectively halve the network’s effective bandwidth capability. So, employ this solution only if 27 mega bits per second (half of the wireless-G bandwidth of 54 mbps) still meets your network requirements. For most Internet radio listening or web browsing, this is sufficient. If you have a spare WAP you can use for this but it’s firmware does not support the repeater function, you might be able to install the dd-wrt firmware on the WAP. This program has repeater options built in.
Make Another WiFi Network
Or, if you’re put off by the repeater solution as I was, but you’d still like to employ your extra access point, then put it near where you’ll most likely connect to the Internet with your Touch, and configure it as a different SSID (a different WiFi network). Of course, you’ll need to get the Internet from your primary Internet router to the WAP. You can run Ethernet cable if possible. If not, you can utilize your power lines to carry the Ethernet signals from your house to wherever you place the WAP outside. However, these are somewhat costly.
Put The WAP Close By
Whether you go the repeater or second-network roots described above, locate the access point serving the desired area as close to that area as possible. Devices with internal antennas (such as the iPod Touch) prefer very strong WiFi signals to eliminate connection drops, especially if you wish to move around with them like me, say, on a riding lawn tractor or swinging with them in a pavilion. A WAP within a hundred feet will do much to ensure against unwanted pauses in audio and video streams playing over the network on these devices.
Summary
In short, you can most effectively extend the operational WiFi range of your iPod Touch. But your best bet is to do so by manipulating the network equipment surrounding the iPod, and not the iPod itself. They may come out at some point with WiFirange boosters for the Touch, such as what you can buy for cell phones. But until them, the above suggestions can help significantly.
Tom Hesley
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