How Do You Use a Cantenna with a Smartphone's Personal Hotspot to Increase Internet Performance (i.e.downloads/upload speeds?)

[dekw04]

Hi all.

I'm currently using my smartphone as a personal hotspot for Internet, but I would like to maximize my download speeds. I believe that I might be able to improve my smartphone hotspot's performance with something like a cantenna/satellite dish.

I've heard that you can use a cantenna to focus the signal for better performance, but everything I've found so far just shows how to make a cantenna, not how to actually use a cantenna once you have one.

With that said, I have the following questions:

1) Can you use a cantenna to increase a smartphone hotspot's download speeds? If I got a cantenna for this purpose, would it increase the the download speeds of the smartphone's hotspot?

2) How do you actually use a cantenna with a smartphone to increase that smartphone hotspot's download speeds?

Thank you.

 

[kanewolf]

I don't believe you can use a dish with a smartphone. Why? Because the phone has to be able to emit/receive cellular and emit/receive WIFI. If you put a reflector to optimize one of those two types of signals, you would block the other. You MIGHT be able to use a reflector to optimize cellular signal and then use USB tethering but not WIFI hotspot.

 

[dekw04]

I don't believe you can use a dish with a smartphone. Why? Because the phone has to be able to emit/receive cellular and emit/receive WIFI. If you put a reflector to optimize one of those two types of signals, you would block the other. You MIGHT be able to use a reflector to optimize cellular signal and then use USB tethering but not WIFI hotspot.

Thank you for your reply. I'm currently using USB tethering because I've read that it makes for more reliable and faster downloads.

Is a cantenna just for improving WIFI performance then?

I presumed that you could just connect a smartphone to a cantenna via a cable and get better Internet performance that way.

I wonder if it's possible to use a USB Y cable to use a cantenna with USB tethering and a smartphone.

Here's the idea:

1) Assuming a cantenna has a USB Type-A plug, you would connect that USB Type-A plug to one of the ports on the "V" part of the Y cable.

2) Then you would take the USB Type-A end that's tethered to your smartphone and plug that into the other port on the "V" part of the Y cable.

3) Then you would connect the remaining port on the Y cable to your computer.

4) Then you would turn on USB tethering on your smartphone and connect to the network.

This idea could work in theory to connect a cantenna to USB tethering with a smartphone and a computer, but I don't know. A cantenna might not even be able to connect to a USB port (for all I know).

 

[kanewolf]

It is not possible to connect a cantenna to a phone because there are no antenna ports to connect to. A cantennna has to connect to an antenna port (coax) not a USB port. A cantenna receives radio signals and has nothing to do with USB.

As I said above, you MIGHT be able to put a phone at the focal point of a satellite dish to improve cellular signal. That is all.