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The $15 wifi booster that a guy in Chiang Mai swore would fix my video calls
Last month a Dutch developer at a coworking space in Chiang Mai told me a cheap wifi booster would solve my spotty Zoom calls. I bought one for $15 at a local shop and now my connection drops even more than before. Has anyone else found a decent travel router that actually works in crowded hostels?
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robert_craig2d agoTop Commenter
A wifi booster just repeats the weak signal it gets, so if the hostel internet is already trash you're basically amplifying garbage. You probably picked up a rebroadcaster that also halves your speed every hop. Those $15 units don't have dual band or proper QoS, so they choke when five people try to stream cat videos at once. Try a travel router that can do wired tethering and has external antenna ports, then plug it into the ethernet jack if the hostel has one. Even a used GL.iNet from Facebook marketplace beats anything from a random shop in Chiang Mai.
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janaw112d agoProlific Poster
Laughing at myself because I actually bought one of those $15 boosters in Bangkok once... thought I was being smart, ended up with a paperweight that made my Netflix buffer harder than a clogged drain. Plugged it in, got maybe 2 Mbps on a good day, but five people in the hostel lobby watching TikTok lagged me right out of existence. Should've just stuck with the hostel's sketchy ethernet cable in the corner for a wired drop instead.
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