On Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:11:00 +1000, "John"
wrote:

My questions are : Is putting a reflector adjacent to the antenna on the
road side sufficient to screen off the signal? A follow on from that is
would that reflected signal boost signal levels in the house?.

There's always some location where your wireless router is going to be
heard. You can reduce the signal by placing something either RF
absorbent or RF reflective between the antenna and the road, but
you'll never get rid of all of the signal. Someone with a high gain
(dish) antenna, can probably pickup enough signal if they are
sufficiently determined.

Your best protection is the encryption built into your wireless
router. WPA2-PSK-AES is the best.

As for improving the signal in other parts of the house, that depends
on the shape and composition of the house. 2.4Ghz does not penetrate
walls very well. If the walls are hollow and mostly wood, they're
almost transparent to RF. However, if the walls are stuffed with
aluminum foil backed fiberglass insulation, very little will pass.

Optimizing the antenna pattern to best cover the house is possible,
but there are limitations. Antennas do not create RF. The merely
redirect it. If you want to increase the amount of RF in one area,
you have to do it at the expense of other areas. For example, since
your omnidirectional antenna wastes some RF aimed toward the road, a
simple reflector will bounce much of this RF back into the house. That
may help or hinder depending on whether the incident and reflected
signals add or cancel. For a start, a large sheet of aluminum foil
taped to the wall might be useful.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558