Good amplified wireless adapters have noise filtering as well, should help with that some. I have also had some trouble with directional antennas, you really do need to position them just right. They are better for long distance though. Generally I hear that you use Omni directional for the hotspot and then directional to connect to it. Directional definitely works better for direct line of sight, that is why you would rarely want to use a directional antenna for the hotspot, because it needs to provide WiFi to a radius around it not a narrow line from it. But if you point a directional antenna right at the hotspot I think it would still be better than omni directional at cutting through walls and other objects than a comparable omni directional antenna would be. But omni directional is better at getting signal that takes an erratic path, so if you have an omni directional antenna in a room with an open door, signal will go out the open door, whereas with a directional antenna it will only go where you point it. I am not sure. If your neighbor has a wireless router that is in a straight line through four walls away from you, I think that directional antenna stands more chance of getting signal through the walls, but it needs to be pointed right at the wireless router. On the other hand, if they have a wireless access point in the same place but a window is open, an omni directional antenna will pick up signal coming out of the open window better. I can definitely see that omni directional are superior in some cases, in most cases they will definitely pick up more signals at the same time, but directional antenna is more likely to be able to pick up more signals at different times depending on how you have it positioned. The first directional antenna I got was a big let down for me but I think it is because I did not amplify it at all. The second directional antenna I got worked great when it was amplified but it needed to be pointed just right for optimal performance. Omni directional are certainly better if you don't want to have to reposition your antenna all the time, but I think directional are better for busting through walls (whereas omni directional are better for going around walls, if there is any way to go around the walls). I am no expert on wireless stuff, but isn't that sort of what a dipole antenna does? I thought that dipole antennas are essentially two directional antennas in one, with each one pointed in the opposite direction. I think dish antennas are omnidirectional antennas but with a big angle. They are probably your best bet for getting the most signal as well, since they are usually mounted outdoors and have at least one less wall to penetrate through. On the other hand, you cannot really drive around with a huge dish antenna mounted on the roof of your car, I think that would look suspicious . I assume you mean db. My impression on antennas from personal experience, but again I am no expert on this, is that the antenna is sort of a bottleneck that determines the best possible range you can get. But even the best antenna without an amp is not going to be very good, it needs to be powered in order to live up to its maximum potential. This is just the impression I have after once buying a really high end antenna and noticing it had very little effect on my range as compared to a much cheaper antenna. I think the limiting factor was that I was not powering either of the antennas, because later when I bought an amplifier it made a lot of difference and that is when the differences between the antennas really became obvious. Yeah that is a problem for amplified signals, but there are noise filtering amplifiers as well maybe that will make the difference. Have you ever tried a noise filtering amplifier? In a lot of European countries you can buy those things over the counter with no ID required. I think that they can all be triangulated as easily as a phone though, so it might not actually help very much at all especially if you use it from your house. If they all come with GPS then it will be even less helpful. Another alternative is to use hacked cable modems with spoofed MAC addresses, although I don't think this is much more helpful for anonymity than using open WiFi. The cable company can at least determine your neighborhood, and then they can locate you by running a tap on each of the lines in the neighborhood looking for where the rouge signal is coming from. Usually I think this is too much of a hassle for the cable company to do, but if the police are after you they can do it, might be a bit more work for them than tracing a rouge WiFi signal but it is by no means impossible. Plus using hacked Cable Modem is much more likely to have the cable company come after you than using Open or Cracked WiFi is to have the person who owns the access point come after you or contact the police, but to the best of my understanding it is difficult for the cable company to detect that you are doing this if you go about it right, and even when they detect somebody doing this it is often too much a pain for them to bother tracking them down.  I think those are called dipole antennas.