High Gain Antenas and Signal Repeters

[Mister Ugly]

Ok so for whatever reason my wireless network up and decides to shrink its range on me and now i'm getting intermittent signal to the back of my house. At first i thought it was my new wireless headset causing interference but after lots of testing i can say its not the headset or anything else wireless in the room causing interference. My major problem is i really dont have much play with where i can place my router so what i'm looking into getting is either a set of high gain antenas or some sort of signal repeter to boost my little belkin n routers signal some. Does anyone by chance have any recommendations. I'd like to stay as frugal as possible here so the high gain antenas are what i'm leaning on if i can.

[confus]

first thing I recommend trying is making your receiving antenna (and preferably both) directional using either a parabolic reflector or pringle can type cantenna, both focus the waves to your antenna

look at this http://www.wikihow.com/Boost-a-Router-Signal
or this http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/448
there are lots of pages for making cantennas
also I recommend checking what your current wifi strength is now so you can monitor your progress with trying things
I can't currently locate the software I found useful, this software looks workable http://dnsoft.be/dn_software/dn_free...isis/index.htm

[Mister Ugly]

Unfortunately a cantenna is out. My setup sits behind where the router is located and my brothers setup is infront so using a parabolic would leave one of us in the dark. I have been monitoring my signal with this app for android. It checks the strength, noise and lets me know what is the least crowded channel to set my signal on.

[confus]

If you can't do completely directional then you only have a dozen or so options left to you, though I do recommend you try a cantenna simply on your computers wireless antenna, it can have some improvement

high gain antennas are mostly slight improvements only as (I believe) the fcc regulated the maximum power a transmitter is allowed to transmit so the router and network card are the bottlenecks
as said in my opinion quite well here:
"Output is only as good as input strength from the router and don't expect huge gains to overcome RF interference, number of walls, etc. I purchased antenna to overcome a weak and sometimes no signal to a laptop I use in a shop building 200 ft. from my house where the router is located. I connected the D-Link antenna to the router in the house and I now am able to get a weak but usable and steady signal. It does what I expected for the price but if you need to go from a marginal signal to very strong and fast, don't expect miracles."
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-063-_-Product

Another option is to buy a cheap access point, connect that to your computer via network cable and place the access point somewhere more appropriate which may be in another room
http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCateg...es&Order=PRICE