Portis

I am tired of fighting my laptop? My wireless router is in the basement next to my PC. My PC has an ethernet cable between router and PC so i can't move the router. Trouble is that on the main floor of the house I end up fighting with the stupid laptop all of the time, because it keeps saying network disconnected.

I am figuring i need to ramp up my signal upstairs. Is a wireless repeater the way to go? I want to go cheap so don't want to jump up to 802.11g. I currently just have B, because it was cheap. Can someone recommend an inexpensive fix? Thanks.

catatonic

Thing is you need to look at the floorplan of your house, and where you can and can't connect.

walls really screw the signal. if you have a lot of walls, it might be good to bring the router upstairs, and run a cable through the floor into the baqsement for the pc down there. Or jsut hook the basement PC with wireless as well.

Also, is the router any good? Some routers have terrible tx/rx specs.

Repeaters are good if there's no other option. I would be against an upgrade antenna, since the gain from those is at the cost of having to deal with a more directional signal. I use an antenna. but only because my laptop is only used in a very spcific area.

Oh, and some microwave ovens wreak havoc on 802.11b signals....reason is they are the same frequency (2.4ghz)

Portis

I don't know what the deal is. I am sitting 5 feet away from the router and only getting 33% signal strength. It used to be a lot better. I have a few 2.4ghz products around the house but i don't believe anything is transmitting at the moment.

How do you use an antenna on a laptop card? Or did you mean you put it on the router?

Jerseysbest

What kind of router is it? I've heard of them crapping out, or just working enough to connect you but either not at full speed or no emitting a good signal

khuon

Have you thought about simply pulling cable between the floors and relocating the router/AP to the main floor? Or another option if you need to maintain wireless coverage on both floors is to pull cable and stick another AP on the main floor. I know it's getting to be harder and harder to buy just an AP without the router functionality these days but you can but a router/AP and just disable the routing so it can be simply used as an AP. If you're using 802.11b/g, just remember to configure their channels to not overlap. Recommended channel settings are 1, 6 or 11. Don't set two channels to be adjacent otherwise you will overlap their sidebands. For two access points, use 6 for one and 11 for the other or use 6 for one and 1 for the other. Your antennas are most likely "tuned" for 6 so you should use that channel for one AP to get optimal signal out of it.

af895

Ranger,

If you're sitting next to the WiFi router and getting a poor signal, something's wrong.
I'd check the router config and see that the gain is set to 100% (-0dB).
Failing that, power it down, clean the contacts where the antenna meets the box and power it back up.

You mentioned it was better in past so either the router's pooched or some soft/hardware tweaking should fix it. I've used repeaters to bridge different buildings together but never needed one for an average house. BTW: my router is on the 2nd story of my house and the laptop in the basement gets excellent signal strength. Occassionally a cordless phone (2.4GHz) will give it pause.