[Starmaster]

HI Wheelhouse

There are a couple of things that determine how well wifi works for you at any given location.

The first thing you need is a good wifi signal/path between your computer and an access point that provides connection to the internet. This is where a signal booster/amplifier/outside antenna will help increase performance. By providing a stronger signal and less "noise", you will have a higher throughput of data between the two.

The other thing that you need is a high bandwidth connection between the access point and the internet. This connection is shared by everyone that is connected to the internet through that access point. So, if there is a large number of users all on the same access point at the same time and it has limited bandwidth, the performance will range from "ok sometimes" down to "unusable".

The bottom line, for high speed internet access, you need both of the above connections to be working well. If either one has a poor connection, the internet service will be poor.

An amplifier/booster/outside antenna can definitely improve the first link. However, there is nothing the user can do to improve the second link other than connect to a different access point that has higher bandwidth available.

It has been my general experience that more often than not, a park's wifi signal from their access point has adequate strength but the park's available bandwidth to the internet is lacking. As a result, we usually end up using our smartphones' hotspot feature or our Verizon MiFi to get adequate internet performance (and increased security).

Dave