Wireless internet and wireless network, why how what?

[XistenZ]

Sudden thought: I get internet from a wireless source, like an antenna in the woods several miles away. I can receive and send data to this antenna pretty well. Is it my router that sends data back or does the antennas signals bounce back somehow?

Connecting a device wirelessly to the router one room away looses almost all signal so there's a huge difference in signal strength.

Tl;dr
Can my router transmit data miles away or is the mast a really good listener?

(disclaimer, the above is a fictional scenario. I have no issues as I'm not even using wireless internet myself, just curious how it works.
Please refrain from trying to help me with any problems I do not have).

 

[burdenbound]

A good wireless router is probably good for maybe 50-60ft.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Sudden thought: I get internet from a wireless source, like an antenna in the woods several miles away. I can receive and send data to this antenna pretty well. Is it my router that sends data back or does the antennas signals bounce back somehow?

Connecting a device wirelessly to the router one room away looses almost all signal so there's a huge difference in signal strength.

Tl;dr
Can my router transmit data miles away or is the mast a really good listener?

(disclaimer, the above is a fictional scenario. I have no issues as I'm not even using wireless internet myself, just curious how it works.
Please refrain from trying to help me with any problems I do not have).

hmmmm In all my time on Tom's forums, I've never seen such a bizarre post as yours.

I'm genuinely scratching my head wondering firstly, what it is exactly you're asking and secondly if your joking!?

Q1. Yes, and no. Yes, your router sends/recieves data. But that could be through a couple of ways. The router sends the info through a phone hardline (typically), or via an antenna that would normally be on the roof of the property. The antenna on the roof sends the signal (sometimes miles) to a mast, which connects to the ISP's connections and you get internet access.

Q.2 As in the bit above, your router sends the signal via phone line or antenna, not directly to a mast miles away. THe signal from the router wifi doesn't go that far. it's just in the confines of the property your in.

Given your disclaimer, I suspect your just bored and can't be bothered reading some simple and very easily accessible information online.

 

[little_me]

Wireless bandwith and frequency kind of go hand in hand, higher frequency, higher bandwidth.

Your router/modem (that happens to have SIM card slot or USB slot for USB based cell connection) connects to cell tower antenna at lower frequency than you connect to router (most use 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz to get better bandwidth)
as such, due to high frequency, you get quite fast speeds (up to 1300Mbit/sec tops, now?) but that also suffers the farther you go from the router, walls also hamper it.

so wireless access on router is different from cell towers, they use different frequency bands and different transmit protocols.

Tl;dr
kind of both.

 

[Solandri]

A good wireless router is probably good for maybe 50-60ft.

This is a common misconception. The range of your WiFi router doesn't just depend on the router. It also depends on the receiver. A poor receiver (broken or misaligned antenna) might only allow a few feet of range. A good directional antenna could connect to your router from several miles away. The only Internet available at my work address is 1.5 Mbps DSL, so I have a big parabolic dish antenna on the roof which connects to an omnidirectional hotspot about a mile away for 40 Mbps down, 5 Mbps up. There is nothing special about the hotspot - it's actually designed for people to connect to when they're in the waiting room of the business (CableWiFi) so typically about 50-100 ft. But because of my antenna, I'm able to use it from a mile away.

The way most wireless Internet services are configured is a big omnidirectional antenna on top of a hill somewhere. When you order the wireless internet service, they mount a directional antenna on top of your home or business pointed at their big hilltop antenna. Antennas work the same way for both reception and transmission. So the directional antenna not only boosts the signal strength of signals it receives from the hilltop antenna, it also boosts the strength of signals it transmits to the hilltop antenna.

This strength boost comes at the cost of narrowing the angle of the signal. Basically, when transmitting, the directional antenna is taking signal which would normally be going out to the sides and behind, and is instead directing it into a narrow beam in front. Instead of the 1 Watt of signal power (max allowed on open frequencies) being spread all around, it's focused into a tight beam aimed at the hilltop antenna. Likewise, when receiving, the directional antenna is less sensitive to the sides and behind, so noise sources from those directions don't interfere as much. But it's super-sensitive to signals from the direction where it's aimed, which hopefully is the hilltop antenna.

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/antenna_theory/antenna_theory_radiation_pattern.htm

If only two sites need to communicate only with each other, you can boost signal strength even more by putting directional antennas at both ends, aimed at each other.

So in your hypothetical example, the mast is a really good listener. But the way it's usually done in practice is with your router and (directional) mast roles reversed.

Wireless bandwith and frequency kind of go hand in hand, higher frequency, higher bandwidth.

There are a several different things going on with frequency which affect bandwidth, some favor the higher frequency, some favor the lower frequency. This is a topic really too large for a forum though, and I'd suggest visiting some antenna sites to learn more (there will be higher math involved - lots of logs).

Then there's also the matter of converting digital information into a form which can be carried over analog waves, and the mathematical limits thereof. Claude Shannon (father of information theory) wrote a seminal paper on it in 1948, and it's still the best treatment of it I've read. His writing style is very easy to understand, so if you can follow the math it's well worth reading. It's the foundation of everything from ethernet to WiFi to cell phones.

http://math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon/entropy/entropy.pdf

Khan Academy video of it (which I haven't seen but I assume is more digestible than the paper).
https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science/informationtheory/moderninfotheory/v/a-mathematical-theory-of-communication