Wireless Signal Boosters

How can I make my wireless signal stronger?

I recently got cricket wireless broadband. It has a wireless usb modem, no router. There is a place on the modem to plug in a "signal booster" or "antenna", I am not sure what to call it. Please help, what do I need to hook it up to to make it faster? What I am looking for is a y cable.

Public Comments

1. An antenna is a signal booster in the sense that it will pick up a weaker signal than the unit can do without it. Some antennas are better than others. I'd suggest you contact cricket and tell them your signal isn't strong enough and you need a signal booster. They are likely to give you one, rather than have an unhappy customer... . Note that the speed of your connection isn't going to change. That's fixed. What should change is your reliability, i.e. you'll have a better connection, but not a faster one. . . . . . .
2. You can buy a standard N wireless router. This wont increase the speed but increase the range to where it can operate at its quickest. An extended antenna can also help somewhat. If you want a good reliable router, buy a linksys router or D-Link, preferably Linksys. Never had a problem with them Also, there is a firmware you can reflash it with called DD-WRT, google it and go to the router database and type in your model. This firmware is amazing and increases the functionality of your router. With this you can use features such as QoS (quality of service) which you can specify which applications will get the majority of broadband or you can also specify which computer on the network gets highest priority. You can also overclock the router and increase the range at which it broadcasts at or decrease it to prevent your signal from bleeding out of your house perimeter Also, want a secure and fast browser, use Google Chrome. IE is over-rated and look at it this way, it comes on every computer you buy so it is the most used browser. Don't you think it'd make sense that thats why hackers target IE. That's why alternate browsers are better. Hope this helped
3. I also have Cricket using the A600 USB modem. A Y cable comes with the A600 modem. If you have this modem check in the box it came in. The Y cable is in the bottom under a cardboard flap. They have another modem but I dont know if it comes with a Y cable. The Y cable should be available at any computer store and maybe BestBuy or Radio Shack. It pluge one USB device into 2 USB ports on your computer. It adds a voltage boost to help signal reception. If you have two lighted connection bars the Y cable might get you three. I had two bars and the Y cable didnt help at all. I just had to get an extension cable and move the modem around. I use it on a stationary desktop PC so it never moves but from day to day I have to move the modem for better reception. I hope your experience is better than mine. It was fair for 40 days or so. It was never fast enough to watch video like they show in their tv commercials. After 40 days though it dropped to a crawl speed. I can barely access my text emails, I get pages timing out and many pages dont load fully without 3 or 4 tries. I have 3 connection bars so they said my signal was good. I spent 3 days trying to get hold of tech support. Kept being put on hold for half an hour then a message says please call back later. Finally got through. After an hour tech support couldnt figure it out and told me to call back later. I went to the store and they couldnt fix it. Im checking other providers now. Im dumping Cricket soon as I can. I live in Chicago. I cant imagine how service is in smaller cities. I suspect they keep customers on high speeds for thirty days because during that time you can get a full refund. They dont want that. Once thirty days pass they cut your speed regardless of your usage to conserve bandwidth on their inferior network. Cricket isnt new. Theyve been in business a long time but theyve had several name changes. Maybe they change names after many customers get ticked off at them. Try to start over with a name no one knows. Its horrible.