wireless signal strength

chippie123

Hope somebody can help me. I am with Eircom. Have a TP link router. Signal strength is excellent consistently when using the laptop downstairs but when I move upstairs the signal strength drops to very weak which means I cannot use the internet. Is there something I can buy that will boost the signal or will a new router do the trick?

alph

There are a couple of options you could try.
There are the Homeplugs which u can connect to the modem via ethernet cable and then plug into a normal electrical socket. Then in whatever room upstairs youre using the laptop in you can plug in the second one and connect the laptop to it with another ethernet cable. I tried them before though and they didn't work for some reason. I assume its to do with the way my house is wired up (probably badly ).

While these may work for you, they do mean you have cables running to laptop which I find to be quite annoying so maybe this isn't the best option.

There is also a wireless repeater device you can use. Basically, you plug it into a normal plug socket and it acts as an intermediary. Ideally you would want to place it at some place where it will still receive good signal from the modem itself and will also result in good signal to other rooms upstairs. This is the option I currently use and it works very well.

Depending on what your setup is like, they can be a bit tricksy to set up if you're not tech savvy but if you get stuck i'm sure there are people around here that can help you out.

I'm not sure if I'm allowed post links to products so I wont but the one I use is a Draytek Vigor AP 700 or something. Google it, you should be able to find it quite easily.

There may be other options too such as high gain antennas but im not sure how effective they are as I've never really tried them.

Edit: Didn't answer your question entirely. I doubt that a new router would be much better to be honest. You could spend a fortune on a top end one and see only a minimal increase in signal strength.

TheChizler

The above suggestions, but first try changing the wireless channel before you go spending money. Should be in the wireless LAN settings page. Your proximity to certain appliances could be messing with the signal quality. There's no standard for reporting the signal strength/quality in terms of bars on a screen so it could hopefully just be a quality issue.

chippie123

Many thanks alph.
Re. the Homeplugs i am told that they will only work if the sockets are fed by the same trip in the fuse board which is not the case here. upstairs is on different circuit than downstairs.

Nice to know that new router will not help much as this is where I would have wasted the first €100+

chippie123

Thanks TheChizler

I will try that but it will take me some time. Does it make any difference if there are 2 computers working from the same router?

Big Lar

chippie123 wrote: »

Nice to know that new router will not help much as this is where I would have wasted the first €100+

If you still have the original Eircom router, you could set the TP link in bridging mode to repeat the signal as the folks above have mentioned