[dannyyoung]

I have a wireless router which is upstairs in my house, as I have a PC in my studio there that only has a LAN connection so it is attached to one of the four ports on the router by a wireless cable.

I also work downstairs in my dining room and want to use the wireless facility on my laptop, however the signal downstairs is often poor and keeps dropping intermittently. What can be done to boost the wireless signal? The router pretty much has to stay upstairs due to the PC having no wireless card...

All of the PC's/laptops at home are running Windows XP SP3 if that is relevant... thanks for reading!

[lucasm]

You could try a homeplug setup
this uses the house wiring as a ethernet cable, worked well for me. Now using a draft N router and I can use the laptop at the bottom of the garden (just!).

[dannyyoung]

The homeplug setup could be worth investigating, and I am hearing more about N routers... what is the difference with these and standard 802.11g??

[Frank4d]

I would try re-orienting the router antenna first (doesn't cost any money). Try turning it sideways or at a 45 degree angle so the so the side is aimed down toward the dining room (this is because transmit and receive is through the sides of the antenna, not the top).

[lucasm]

The homeplug system is great if you can sit near a socket or maybe a long extention lead in the garden....

DraftN appears to have more power not sure about the whys etc. I bought a TP_Link http://www.3000rpm.com/acatalog/TP-L...1n_Router.html

[dannyyoung]

That router looks like a decent price - but will my laptops support the faster protocol or will I need to buy new wireless cards for them?

[lucasm]

I didn't change anything on mine. I am using a DELL XPS Gen2. Although an XPS its now quite old, single processor 1Gb Ram etc. I know I need to upgrade the memory but its getting round to it.
We have 3 laptops 1 desktop, iPod, PSP and a synology server all using it. Actually the synology is the only one hard wired to it.
having said that you can always try Frank4id's suggestion first.

Now if only someone could read and answer my post (

[dlsayremn]

Wireless N opreates on both 5.0 GHz and 2.4 GHz. Uses MIMO (multiple input/multiple output) technology (multiple antennnae) to increase signal quality and reception.. Wireless N to Wireless N is supposed to have range about double that of Wireless G units. Data transmission rate is about 300 Mbps between N units compared to 54 Mbps between B,G units.
Most retail Wireless N units are backward compatible with B and G at 2.4 GHz. (an aside to oldtimers, it should be compatible with 802.11A units, if you have one). Because of the improved transmission/reception performance of Wireless N, Wireless B,G units could get a slight improvement.

[jasondotto]

If you want to improve signal on your wireless network you have to boost signal on the client end, remember, its not about how much signal the router is transmitting, because routers transmit strong, its about the transmit from the client end back to the router. In most cases people would use a Wireless Repeater. or an external antenna on their desktop.
Also moving router antenna to a 45 degree might help a little.

[dannyyoung]

Well I tried pointing the antenna towards the dining room and that was terrible! So am now going to try it at a 45 degree angle and see what happens. I thought it might be possible to buy something like a wireless repeater or something that could take the signal, boost it up and then send it out again. My laptop has an internal wireless card, is there any software that I can use to boost up the signal, or can anyone point me at a wireless repeater?

[jasondotto]

you can also download Net Stumbler, great program for measuring signal to noise ratio for wireless networks.

[jasondotto]

also a factory omni on a router sends the signal out Horizontal 30 degree beamwidth and vertical 360 degrees.

[dannyyoung]

Angling the antenna to 45 degrees has helped somewhat with signal strength, which is reported as very good or excellent, but the connection keeps dropping what seems like every 20-30 seconds, which is extremely annoying, I am using Outlook and keep getting error messages saying that connection has been lost, and then has been restored, aargh! Could there be something wrong with my router, and how can I test this?

[jasondotto]

Im guessing its a signal problem, windows might say good or excellent signal, but its not accurate. download Net Stumbler and check the signal from there, if the SNR is less than 20 you will have intermittent access to your network.
Remember its not only the router signal,,, its also the transmit from your computer back to the router as well.

[dannyyoung]

Thanks for all your help Jason. I got a second laptop in the same room, and the connection from that seems OK. The first laptop kept on dropping the signal until it eventually would not connect any longer, although that appears to be OK since a reboot.

I am not very technical, is there some kind of log that I can upload from NetStumbler, I have downloaded and installed it on the "good" laptop...