Router range issues - again.
 

I've spent some time looking - I know you've covered it somewhere.


Wife is in old house in Essex. Mate's router is probably less than thirty feet away in a straight line, but there are two or three walls between. Wife can see Netgear, but signal useless.

Router is in a glass conservatory and reaches well in the other direction.


It seems I need to reflect the signal around two corners. :rolleyes:


Really quite serious stuff. We have some serious day to day things to cope with - at hours that are unsociable for the friend/host/landlord. There was to be a connection on arrival, but 'twasn't to be.

Any Ideas. I recall some boosting devices being mention on this forum, but no good search words spring to mind.


Mate will work with me, and It'll pay me to shell out on any kit needed.

Don't waste money on so-called signal boosters.

Loose rivets,

Try changing the aerial, or perhaps try a repeater such as the Netgear WN2000RPT (see here).

To be honest I've yet to jump onto the big WiFi bandwagon in any big sense and much prefer structured cabling etc. as it has so many advantages over WiFi, but I guess that's something for you to consider for your next home.... :E

My limited experience with WiFi repeaters has been a failure.

Antenna(s) with signal gain on the router could be a solution. Directional antennas pointed at your wife's location might help, if the other WiFi user(s) of the router presently get strong signals.

Is there any chance that you can locate the router in one of the intermediate rooms? That would mean fewer walls to penetrate.

If she already gets spotty performance (rather than none at all), only a modest increase in signal strength may be enough. Digital signals tend to be very good or very bad, with little in between.

Can she move the antenna on her equipment around?

seacue

Apparently there's a thing you can plug into a mains socket which distributes the signal. I did a quick Google and can't find anything about it, but did find all this and more.

Boost Wireless Range - How To Expand the Range of a WiFi Network

What you're talking about is something like this:

XAVNB2001

That's one choice. Creating a wifi mesh would be another choice.

If the house next door is a mate and friendly, then I'd be inclined to buy a long Cat5 cable and run it to your place. If it won't reach that far, is there an outbuilding where you can attach a Wireless access device to a Cat 5 cable from his router?

I live in a long thin house, with a workshop some way off from one end. I had all kinds of problems till I bought a separate WAP and put it at the "other end" of the house from the main wireless modem router. I now have full coverage all over the house, workshop, and garden.

I also used to think that signal boosters were a waste of money until I bought one of these


Over the past few months I've used it along with my laptop in many locations, and it has always helped. (most of the many reviews state the same).
Apart from boosting the signal from the router I was intending to use, it always shows loads more (many of which are often totally unencrypted), and whilst staying in hotels, I have "borrowed" these open networks to send the odd e-mail or two.

No, no, no ! Those things are a BAD THING (TM).

See, for example, this very interesting document recently released by the BBC.

Leave your electrical cabling to do what it does best .... transmitting volts and amps, not bits and bytes !

Technically, going between buildings, you should use fibre, not copper.

It's not that much more expensive... especially with the short distance enabling you to use multimode and transceivers with cheap short distance lasers.

What sort of router are you using? I recently bought a new 'draft n' capable one and the wireless coverage was much improved.

Sorry I have to disagree. I have used them where the router was at the end of a large old house and where the signal was required was in a stand alone annexe fed via a sub-main.

The whole thing works faultlessly and is not discernibly slow enough to be of concern.

mixture links to a report that indicates that interference CAN occur. Judging by the hundreds in operation I am not sure how much of an issue it is.

I use Solwise Homeplugs

At under £40 to solve your problem completely in a matter of minutes it strikes me as being something of a no-brainer.

Just my opinion of course.

I have used Devolo dLAN Ethernet plugs for the last 3 years. Nothing wrong with them. Work absolutely fine.

or this...
 

...first of all, since it's internet access, lock it all down to 802.11g.

Then, since your friend is indeed a friend, ask them to lock the freqs down and move em whilst you try to find a good channel. Bear in mind that cordless phones, for example, share the spectrum but won't up on wifi analysers...

hth,
WJ

Any router should reach 30' even if there are walls. Can you move the router a bit and see if it's an antenna issue? Did you try finding out which channel is providing the strongest signal and manually selecting it? You might be having interference from something else in that freq. range.

Wow, lots to consider. Will give due thought when head clears.

Need to get it solid cos I'll be there for a looooong summer this year.

Router is in a square room of glass and plastic built on the back/side of an L shape. Rivetess is in (I think) next door but one - in the wrong direction. He needs his signal strength in other directions cos his computer room is in a shed in the garden. I happen to know these houses are 9" solid redbrick and carry water out of the ground despite being 70" high on the cliff edge. There's a well in his old computer room, and the most powerful dehumidifier couldn't cope with keeping it dry. So, walls are good cages I would think.


As I say, I'll read through again tomorrow - but I'm still at GMT -6 in Tumbleweed town.

PLT's are currently subject to a law suit being brought by the RSGB to make Ofcom enforce the EU regulation that they break. Ofcom knows they don't comply but refuses to enforce the law.

Also, they only work if the sockets are on the same phase which in the case under discussion, is unlikely to be the case as adjacent houses are wired to different phases so as to even up the loads.

Wrong. Any wifi is subject to the surroundings, and if those walls are constructed with anything to block wifi there's precious little you can do about it. Incidentally, if you were unaware there's even wifi-blocking wallpaper marketed by someone like DuPont.

What I find odd is that my laptop will work fine out on my terrace some days, with 3 or 4 bars signal strength, the next day, nothing has changed, but it won't pick up a useable signal at all. Everything is the same position, all doors open, nothing more or less connected to the wifi. I don't know if the weather, for example humidity, might have an effect.