Help! Can't get a strong signal in one room

- C
- crash41
  
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posted
16 years ago

Wed, May 23, 2007 3:05 AM

I'm going crazy here. I've been to costco, circuit city, best buy, etc..

This is the situation. The motorola cable modem is upstairs. It was connected to a netgear wgr614 wireless router. Everything in the house is great except for one room - the room I just put a desktop PC into. The signal hovers around 'low' and 'very low'.

So. I tried the following:

Hooked up my dlink di-524 instead of the netgear. no improvement. Bought (and now returned) a dlink antenna ant24-0700. no improvement Bought a buffalo wireless G - MIMO router promising higher speed/ better range. slight improvement - but nothing better than 'low'. bought a dlink rangebooster N router (promising higher speed/better range) - worse

The PC downstairs has a buffalo USB adaptor connected to a 10 ft extension cord to get as close to the door as possible.

Any ideas? Should i simply try an extender/booster and place it outside the door (i did a test with a wireless pc - outside the door is 'good' but inside is 'low'.

any other suggestions?

I even made a low-rent antenna from a strainer which didn't see to do anything but frustrate me more :)

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- Jeff Liebermann
  
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posted
16 years ago

Wed, May 23, 2007 4:15 AM

crash41 hath wroth:

Instead of changing the wireless router repeatedly, perhaps the problem is at the Buffalo USB radio end? The USB radios are not known for spectacular range because of the tiny internal antenna. I suggest you borrow someones wireless laptop and try it in this black hole of a room. If the laptop works well, then there's something wrong with the USB radio.

Kinda also sounds like this room has aluminium foil backed insulation in the walls. If that's the case, no RF is going to get in or out. Remove one of the electrical wall plates and see if there's any aluminium foil inside the walls. If you have attic access, that's another place to look inside the walls.

There are also alternatives to wireless, that will work in your situation. See:

Power Line networking:

Phone line networking:

CATV coax sharing:

Ethernet extenders:

- T
- Tim Smith
  
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posted
16 years ago

Wed, May 23, 2007 4:04 PM

...

Before going to extremes, try moving the router around in the room. Seriously, that can make an amazing difference. And if it doesn't, at least it hasn't cost anything to try.

Here's an example. My house looks like this:

^ | +-------+--+ N | |__| | 1|B | +----- +----+--------+ | A C| | | D | +--------------+-E- | | | | | | 2| +--------------+------+

I've left out a few interior walls. Router is at point 1, as is my home server. Computer I normally use is at point 2. Signal varied from OK to poor. Doing a maximum transfer rate test (computer at 2 in a loop just blasting data over a TCP connections to server at 1, measuring the delivered data rate at the server) I was getting about 3-6 mbit/second.

Fiddling with the angle of the router and the angles of its two factory antennas did not make much difference.

Simply moving the router 3 feet north boosted it to 10-12 mbit/second.

Then fiddling with the antenna angles got it to a steady 25-27 mbit/second.

Point A is my dishwasher, B is my laundry room, C is my range, and D is my refrigerator. So, with the wrong placement of the router, there might have been one or more big metal appliances between the router and the computer, and moving it a little may have found a spot where it has a path only obstructed by walls. (Oh, E is the fireplace. I don't know if that has any metal lining or anything like that to block a wireless signal).