Ever since routers became commonplace, people have been experimenting with weird DIY tricks that promise to boost their Wi-Fi signal. Many of them involve common household objects, like aluminum foil and mixing bowls. After trying a few of those ideas myself, I decided it was finally time to see whether the classic soda can trick actually works.

How soda cans could theoretically improve my router’s Wi-Fi signal in one direction

Redirect the signal

By now, you’re probably familiar with those stick-shaped antennas found on consumer routers. They’re designed to broadcast Wi-Fi in an omnidirectional, donut-shaped pattern. The goal is to spread the signal as widely as possible in all directions rather than focusing it into a single beam.

But that’s far from the only way antennas can broadcast a signal. If you’ve grown up with those dish antennas you had to adjust every now and then to get better TV reception, then you know antennas can also be made highly directional.

Similar to how those dishes caught the signal and focused it onto a receiver in the center, antennas that transmit a signal, like the ones on a typical Wi-Fi router, could theoretically be made (somewhat) directional by placing a reflector behind them.

This wouldn’t necessarily boost the signal, but it would redirect it, strengthening it in one direction while reducing it elsewhere.

In my specific home layout, this could actually be the perfect scenario. My router is in the kitchen near the front door, and the only room behind the router is the bathroom. My living room and bedroom, where I spend most of my time, are on the opposite end of the house.

This means that if I could find a way to turn the omnidirectional antennas into a more directed signal aimed at my living room and bedroom, I could theoretically get a stronger connection where it matters most. It would make the signal in the bathroom slightly weaker, but that’s not a problem considering how close it is to the router.

As for shaping the signal with reflectors, it can theoretically be done using a wide range of metallic objects. Soda cans are among the most popular hacks you’ll typically see online.

They’re practically free, easy to work with, already have the right shape, and have a hole on the top that you can use to slide them over the antennas. All I had to do to turn the cans into crude parabolic reflectors was cut them vertically and remove some material on each side so they could be angled toward my bedroom and living room.

I put the DIY Wi-Fi trick to the test, and the results weren’t quite what I expected

Time to see whether the trick actually delivers

With the theory out of the way, let’s see how this holds up in practice. I first downloaded and installed Ubiquiti’s WiFiman app on my OnePlus 15 for the tests. It provides an easy way to test Wi-Fi connections and check other key metrics I wanted to focus on for this article, particularly signal strength, latency, jitter, and the established physical link speed on my LAN.

The actual internet speed matters far less for this test, since it can be affected by many factors beyond the raw wireless connection, so don’t get too hung up on it in the examples below.

As mentioned earlier, the goal was to improve signal strength in the bedroom and living room, so for each test, I placed my phone in the exact same spot where I typically use it in each room.

First up, here are a few snapshots of the control tests I did in the bedroom:

After the control, I slid four individual soda cans over each antenna on my Wi-Fi 7 router and attempted to test the supposed improved signal in the bedroom. However, I quickly discovered my initial soda can setup made the signal drastically worse—even forcing a drop to 2.4GHz at the start. The culprit? The two cans on the front antennas were likely blocking the signal from the rear ones.

The signal appeared to be the same strength, but I got an extra 10 ms of latency, some jitter, and a significantly slower physical speed.

After I saw the results, I promptly took my scissors, removed some of the aluminum on each side, and angled the antennas further apart to prevent them from blocking each other as much.

Credit: Ismar Hrnjicevic / How-To Geek

With the fix in place, these were the results from the newly-improved soda can experiment:

Comparing the results to the control, the signal strength and latency appear to be within the margin of error, while the physical speed was exactly the same as in the control.

Honestly, not what I expected at all. But maybe the living room would benefit more from the soda cans.

Here are the control test results for the living room:

And here are the results with the soda cans installed:

This was the most drastic difference so far—but not in favor of the cans. The signal strength, latency, jitter, and physical link speed all dropped significantly with the soda cans in place. Once again, I highly suspect the two cans on the front antennas, combined with how close they were to one another, resulted in the signal being partially blocked.

This just goes to show how much weaker a Wi-Fi signal can become when you place a metallic object near it—even if it’s as thin as an aluminum can.

I assume I could have made the soda cans work by altering the angle of the antennas even further, removing more aluminum, or maybe even leaving only the two cans on the rear antennas.

But at this point, I was already finished and disappointed, especially considering that creating a partial Faraday cage with a few layers of aluminum foil took far less work and achieved much better results at directing the signal where I wanted it.

Credit: Ismar Hrnjicevic / How-To Geek

DIY Wi-Fi hacks are fun, but they’re rarely the best solution

As entertaining as these projects are, they’re ultimately just a band-aid fix for a problem that’s usually not all that difficult to solve.

Moving your router to a high shelf and away from nearby objects, as well as angling the antennas, can provide an instant signal boost, and if you still have dead spots around your home, consider adding an access point for that room or floor—or, better yet, upgrading to a mesh system.