any way to increase signal strength?

fguihen

hi. there is a boradband connection in one room of the house, it is connected to a netopia wireless router/dsl modem. in my room, about 25 ft away, signal is not the best. the signal has to pass through one brick wall, and one plaster board wall. if i got the correct cable and extended the antenna of the router up into the roof would it work better? or is there a better dsl modem/router i can use that has better signal strength?

techie

You have two options really:

Linksys Wireless Expander: it finds the wireless signal from the Netopia and boosts it, all it needs is a power socket.

Linksys Router with Speedbooster: To replace Netopia with this is the better option , I have one in my old cottege with very thick walls and it works a dream.

All the best

Techie.

MunsterCycling

Emm almost any bought wifi router would be better than the netopia I'm pleased to say. To save yourself some grief just get yourself a new modem/router from either Netgear or Linksys (recommended) and you should notice an improvement straight away, also factor in the radio in the equipment you are connecting, it may not be the strongest / best positioned etc.

Suggest you try moving the router if only temporarily and see if that improves things, check too for other WiFi signals on the same channel causing interference.

What make model are the other radios?

fguihen

i know the signal is fine, as when i bring my laptop nearer the room with the router, the signal goes up to excellent. i have checked, and there are no other wireless networks in the vacinity. i think il wait til payday and buy a linksys asdl router. they seem to get good reviews

Yakuza

Sorry for the hijack, but will such an expander work with *any* 802.11g equipment?

I found this http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=307210 on komplett, but in the blurb it talks about compatibility with other Linksys gear.

I have a belkin wireless router (configured in access point mode) which talks to my netopia dsl modem/router. (I've disabled the wireless on the netopia as its one the 11b models 3347).

GoneShootin

I've succesfully "daisy chained" 4 Netgear wg602's to deliver a wireless signal with a kickass range.

What exactly the distance of "kickass" means I don't know, but I've my house covered a and them some.

netman

Since all the repeaters effectively reduce the throughput by retransmitting every frame, how does it affect network latency?

I'm specifically interested in ping times, I'm trying to figure out a way to solve my gaming problems and I'm not sure that a repeater would do the job.

dub45

Just a couple of thoughts on this subject - it is very hard to recommend any wireless equipment as it is really difficult to predict the performance in advance. If you want to go for a high performance unit then it seems wise to match the router and the laptop card. I have found that the linksys wag54gs (its an all in one) seems to give very good coverage but (and its a bit but) the early firmware was very iffy and it arbitrarily lost settings and defaulted back to its ''sold'' state. there are lots of reviews here: www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk.

One area that might be worth investigating is Mimo and I have seen the linksys wag54gx2 get very good reviews but to get the best from it I think you will need to buy the laptop card as well.

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?ProductID=2365

Incidentally I have seen that linksys expander that someone mentioned get pretty dire reviews too.

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/Reviews.asp?ProductID=1847

dub45

fguihen wrote:

i know the signal is fine, as when i bring my laptop nearer the room with the router, the signal goes up to excellent. i have checked, and there are no other wireless networks in the vacinity. i think il wait til payday and buy a linksys asdl router. they seem to get good reviews

Have you considered that the performance of the laptop wireless card itself might be a contributing factor? If you have a centrino model I assume that you can disable wireless and install a new laptop card - would there be any chance of borrowing a wireless card from a friend to try this? Or have you used the laptop in any other wireless situations to test its performance.

There are a lot of wireless developments due over the next year or so - new wireless standard to be agreed (although a recent draft was turned down) etc etc and apparently the manufacturers have lots of new equipment to be launched so unless you really need it its not the best of times to be buying stuff that you cannot guarantee will give you the improvement you want.