UPC wifi range

markjbloggs

Thinking of upgrading to UPC broadband and i thought I might get quicker answers here than trying to contact UPC.


1. What is the range of the wifi router? There are 2 walls between the inlet and my PC, is that OK?

2. Have never run a PC on wireless before - any caveats?

3. How big is the router, and where must it be placed?



Thanks in advance,

M

-ADREN-

The range is fine for a standard 4/5 bed roomed house. I have my router in one corner of the house downstairs and I'm upstairs near the other corner of the house. It is going through about 3 solid enough walls, and I get 2 bars of reception.

Increase of receiving the reception can also depend on what your using to recieve it, for instance I have an old laptop with wireless on it, and it doesnt recieve as well as my new laptop which is an Acer that has somesort of 'Signal Up' technology that increases it a bit.

Now depending on what UPC connection your getting, it may decrease the download speeds. I am on the 20mb connection and sometimes upstairs on 2 bars of reception I can only get about 1.5 mb downloading, but at other times on the same 2 bars of reception it will pelt away at 2.3 mb download. So its a bit crazy that way.

If your looking to increase the range though this little thing is gas, and well worth spending to mins of your creative time to get an extra bit of reception.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUTT8wdN_VA

http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/index.html


Your man setting up the connection for you will handle the set up of your router n all that, after that you just turn on any wireless device in you house, click search, finds the router, you enter your password, and away you go. Piece of piss.

The router is small, its a little bigger then say the size of your open hand. The router will most likely be beside one of your cable sockets as it needs to connect to the cable modem, but if you want to place it away from the cable modem say closer to a place that you want better reception, you can just buy a really long piece of network cable and then place it where ever you want. Just reember, you'll will have a big long thick network cable running from your cable box to where ever you want to put the router though.

Hope this helps.
Gluck.

markjbloggs

Thats a great summary, thanks

Mark

nohopengn

The ideal place for a WiFi AP/Router is to have it at the top of your house and the antenna pointing down.

In reality this is not feasible for most people so just try and have it sitting on a shelf (in an area) that is not too cluttered.

From a range/speed perspective a normal 3/4 bed semi-d should be completely covered by 1 device. Bear in mind that the WiFi device is probably operating at 54Mbps (throughput 20Mbps +) and most peoples net connections don't get near those speed. So even if you get a couple of bars that should still allow you enjoy convenience of wireless networking.

nohopengn

Forgot to mention, make sure you enable the security features on your router. You don't want someone accessing your network or the files on your PC.

cheers