Eircom Broadband Signal Problem

Turkleton

Hi, complete tech novice here but bascially I have eircom broadband in my home but the signal isnt strong enough from one side of the house to the other. In my sitting room it's good as it is close to the modem (netopia I think) but in my bedroom i can only get it in certain places and it comes and goes. Im assuming its the walls etc just blocking the signal so basically Im wondering is there anything I can do to improve the signal? Im in a rural area so Im sure noone is hacking my line and slowing it down (I know this is common with eircom) but my two neighbours do both have eircom broadband as well so could this result in a slightly lower signal?

As I see it my option are to move the modem to a more central location in the house but I dont have any idea on how to do this or what I would need etc. Is their anything else I could do/try?

Thanks in advance!

bhickey

If you have other phone sockets in the house then you could try moving the Eircom modem/router (including the ADSL filters) to one of the other sockets and see if that makes a difference.

Also you could try changing the wireless channel from the default of 7 to either 1 or 11 and see if that helps. To do this. login to the router at http://192.168.1.1 and look for the wireless settings page.

Turkleton

Thanks for the reply,ill certainly give it a go when I get home (unfortunately not until the weekend) I dont have any other phone sockets but I thought it might be possible to just buy some longer cable and just move it that way? Sounds a bit too simplistic to work though Im sure?
I read somewhere before that maybe if I changed the antenna on the modem it would help? I would ideally want to get a fairly strong signal to my room as I enjoy a spot of online gaming and moving my ps3 to the sitting room everytime I want to play is annoying to say the least! I think the last time I checked my ps3 was clocking up about 6% signal strength and constantly dropping it at that.

Cheers again

bhickey

Turkleton wrote: »

..... I dont have any other phone sockets but I thought it might be possible to just buy some longer cable and just move it that way?

Yes that would work too (as long as it's reasonable quality telephone cable and you're not moving it too far). 20-30 feet of telephone cable shouldn't be an issue. Even better (in terms of network performance) would be to run an ethernet cable from the router to the bedroom and use that instead of wireless.

Turkleton

The ethernet cable wouldnt really be possible due to the layout of the house, and I think it would probably be closer to 50 feet if I had to move it which I would gather would probably weaken the signal.

Another option I noticed is putting a wireless repeater in a central location? have you any experience of these? It would seem to fit the bill perfectly..no more cables and increases my wireless range?

spooky donkey

bhickey wrote: »

If you have other phone sockets in the house then you could try moving the Eircom modem/router (including the ADSL filters) to one of the other sockets and see if that makes a difference.

Also you could try changing the wireless channel from the default of 7 to either 1 or 11 and see if that helps. To do this. login to the router at http://192.168.1.1 and look for the wireless settings page.

ths ip address for this 192.168.1.254 and if asked for a password use broadband1. try use uneven channell numbers.

bhickey

Turkleton wrote: »

The ethernet cable wouldnt really be possible due to the layout of the house, and I think it would probably be closer to 50 feet if I had to move it which I would gather would probably weaken the signal.

Hmm. 50 feet would probably be okay too. Worth a try if you can get your hands on the cable handy enough.

Turkleton wrote: »

Another option I noticed is putting a wireless repeater in a central location? have you any experience of these? It would seem to fit the bill perfectly..no more cables and increases my wireless range?

Yes that'd probably work fine too. Also try moving the Eircom router around a bit. You'd be surprised at what a difference that can make. And try changing the wireless channel. Unless you're in a very big thick-walled house, you really should be able to get an adequate signal with just the one router.

bhickey

spooky donkey wrote: »

the ip address for this 192.168.1.254

Doh!

Turkleton

You would think so alright, I mean it's not like i live in a mansion :P

I think ill look into the wireless repeater as I cant imagine moving the router around a bit and changing the chanel will improve my current strength from 6% to 70-80 % Id imagine ill require for online gaming and the like. But I will try it out this weekend and let you know how it goes.

thanks again!

dub45

You could also try the "plug" solution which a lot of people find helps them in a similar situation to yours.

http://netgear.co.uk/powerline_wallplugged_extenders.php

Also just to be pedantic but it helps to understand the overall situation. Eircom or whoever the isp is supplies the signal which reaches your router or modem. After that their responsibity ends. Its your decision to then extend that around your house via a wireless network. No one will hack your line (in the sense of the line going into your house) but people can hack into wireless networks if they are not properly protected and thats what you read about.

The general problem with wireless is that it is impossible to predict the performance of the equiment in any particular situation in advance.

The best wireless channels to try are 1, 6 or 11.