Fed up with low signal strength

Hi guys,

My friend has a Belkin router in his room. My room is on the other side of the apartment, perhaps 80 feet away. I didn't feel like getting a really long ethernet cable, so I purchased a wireless card for my desktop, a Buffalo WLI2-PCI-G54S.

However, my connection has been very spotty. the signal strength is always low and consistently between 1mbps and 18 mbps (usually at the lower end).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Andy

 

802.11 a and b are not designed to go through walls. the fiberglass in the sheetrock affects the signal, however it should be able to make it through one wall. 802.11g is better, it was designed for distance and speed. if i am not wrong the signal is flat like a pancake which allows for greater distance. this also concentrates the signal to a smaller area when going through walls. at any rate i would upgrade to g. i have also seen the transmitter in a wireless router start to go bad and its coverage area decrease.

 

I believe my card is a g card. Could it be the brand of the card? Or maybe there are settings that I should change?

Thanks

Andy

 

You might want to check out a "Can-tenna". Seen them at Radio Shack,
but certainly online a number of places. These little gizmos are great for
apartment dwellers who live across the street from a public librarys having
wi-fi. They are directional pick-up and need to be aimed. I can "see"
a nearby retirement home nearly quarter-mile away.

 

if the router is not g your card will negotiate down to whatever the router is. make sure the router is g

 

Thanks for the advice guys.

I checked the router and it is a G, so is my card. Here's another thing, my laptop, which has wireless, consistently connects faster than my desktop connection. For example, if I get 5.5 mbps for my desktop, I usually get 18 mbps on my laptop.

Does this mean it's the card? I did some research and Buffalo, although a cheaper brand, doesn't seem to be too bad...

 

In addition to the coffee can antenna, (which you can make yourself) look at this link
http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/index.html

Its Free and all you need is a piece of cardboard and some tin foil. I use it and it works like a champ!

 

What this means is your laptop is in a different location as your Desktop. Im assuming your desktop has a PCI card? Probably burried in the back of the PC somewhere. Your laptop is probably not being obscured by obstacles as much. You can also buy (make) higher dB gain antennas for your PCI card and get it a few feet higher.

 

Unbelievable guys... After reading the comment about my laptop being in a different position than my desktop, I decided to shift my computer so that the back of it ( where the antenna sticks out) points out towards the router. The signal just increased 10 fold...

Thanks guys!

 

There is No "Magic Wireless Router" that covers every environment

Buy few units interconnect them and create an Access System.

Link to: Wireless What Should I Get?

The best Method to Extend Wireless Coverage depends heavily on the Specific Environment.

Look at these pages they describe most of the options that are within the means of Entry Level users, and choose the one that fits you environment best.

http://www.ezlan.net/Distance.html

http://www.ezlan.net/bridging.html

http://www.ezlan.net/antennae.html

In general, the best Method involves using multiple units connected with wire to the source.

Alternatively, WDS, ( http://www.ezlan.net/Wireless_Modes.html ) system using Hardware of one Brand across the board.

Wired connected Access Point is the best solution since, WDS cuts the "Speed" into half past the WDS unit.

 

Wow! That URL was worth beaucoup bucks! I constructed a couple of
the antenna reflector designs .. and gained 2 more bars of signal strength,
and can now work from my garage workbench when I position the reflectors
correctly. See attached pic. Many Tnx again.

 

Thanks for the pics. They make it a lot more clear, something the original sight might think of adding.

 

Tim,
I purchased a repeater and have tried several times to get it hooked up to my wireless router--a piece of crap that has no signal strength, even if you are in the same room pointed right at it. Anyway, I get it set up right to the point where it needs an address to communicate to...the router's address is 192.168.1.1 and the repeater is 192.168.0.30 and it tells me that the router is out of range. Surely there is a way to make them talk! A stupid 0 instead of a 1 seems just incredible to be an issue, but hey, I don't live in base 2 world. Can you help?

 

I set up the wireless router with a WPA-PSK security and address of our cable modem. I tried to set up the repeater/rebroadcaster with the computer attached to the wireless router, but it would not communicate with it (via ethernet cable). I took the repeater to my newest computer and the one that has almost no signal to it and connected it via the ethernet and used the repeater setup. It found the network, but the address came up with all zero's for the location of the wireless router. While it will connect to the wireless, it will not find the broadband router from there and connect to the internet. I tried using the broadband router address, but that wouldn't work either. It will not take the wireless router's address either, the out of range error.

After that, I tried to change the wireless static address to 192.168.0.5 but that blew it's mind and I had to reset it back to factory settings.

Then, I tried to set the repeater's address to a different static address and that blew its mind. Again, I had to reset it.

What blows my mind is we actually had it working on Saturday and by Sunday morning, no-one could get anywhere. I worked on it much of the day Sunday and finally on Monday, we reset everything. My kids were so disgusted, they took advantage of my stored password, removed the security and reset the wireless.

I then reset the repeater and used its setup program. That is where I am today, it is set up with no security, it will connect to the network, but go no further.

Any ideas??? Thanks for taking the time to respond.

 

Thanks, I will do that...again! First time I called, they couldn't figure anything out at all, but will try.

 

You are correct, we've unplugged, replugged, reset, unplugged...every combo you could try. I'm guessing that there is a setting in some obscure section of the setup that we are missing. I'm a person that reads directions, but may have skimmed over something and can't find it going back through it. Harder to read on screen, but too cheap to print out all 50 pages of the manual, especially when it's mostly pictures and baby talk.

Thanks again.

 

Hi Tim,
You will have to laugh, turns out that there was nothing wrong with the repeater or its setup. Somehow in all this, my networking settings on my browser got messed up. I was looking at it tonight and realized that the repeater was reaching everything and I have a great signal, nearly 100%, but I just wasn't handshaking with the net. I went through the release, connect routines and finally got whatever setting that was messed up to clear. So, we are cool on the whole setup. Thanks for talking me through the frustration!