Increasing Wireless Reception

rogue-entity

I share my DSL connection using a NetGear RangeMax WPN824 MIMO Wireless router. My desktop is connected with Ethernet, my Laptop is wireless.

The broadband modem and router are in my room at one end of the house and face the hall right to the other end of the house. My dads office is at the other end of the house but to the right (from the front of the router). Parallel to the hall, on the right and between my room at the back left and my dads office to the front right is one of the old walls (about 2ft thick). I know that this is weakening the signal.

When I use my laptop I can get a signal in any room of the house. I installed a Belkin WiFi card in my dads PC so that he could connect to the Internet on it, but his PC cannot pick up my network. The software that came with the card shows no networks, but the card shows an orange link light and every time the PC is switched on a balloon popup tells me that there is a wireless network in range. But try as I might I cannot get a signal from it. Sometimes after restarting it will connect though.

I was wondering, is their anyway of improving my signal without replacing the router, or moving the router too far away from the PC. Any simple solutions such as a cantenna, or a repeater.

vibe666

if you're looking to see how strong the signal is, have a look for netstumbler (www.netstumbler.org off the top of my head, but google may disagre, you never know!) which will tell you what's out there and how strong the signal is in various parts of the house.

simple ways to increase the signal on your dads desktop would be to get a bigger aerial for it (ebay should get you sorted for a reasonable price) other than that, there's plenty of homebrew projects with USB wifi antennas and all sorts of chinese cookware on the net. for an idea of what I'm on about (in case you're thinking I'm nuts about now, which you might well be ) have a look here: http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/ these guys have done more for homebrew wifi than just about anyone else on the planet and hav egotten some pretty astounding results.

for a simple way of increasing the signal strength, try using something to reflect it in the cirection you want it to go, using something like a sheet of cardboard with tinfoil on it behind the aerials at both ends to direct the transmitter and reciever signals towards each other more. I can only imagine that a MIMO router will use the reflection to its advantage anyway, given the way they are supposed to work.

another alternative would be to move the router to a more central location in the house, which should cost you no more than the price of some CAT5 network cable. assuming you have more than one phone socket in the house and everything in your network is wireless, there's no reason at all for you not to move it to somewhere closer to your dad's PC. especially when he's the only one having trouble connecting to your router.

give netstumbler a go, and take readings with your laptop in various places in the house, and then try moving the router, even without moving the DSL (after all, you don't need the DSL to be working for the router to work) to a few viable locations and power it up to see what difference it makes.

good luck anyway, and see how you do.

rogue-entity

I have considered some of your suggestions.

I will probably get a better antenna for the PC and I am starting to think it may have been better if I had bought a Netgear MIMO card for the PC to match the router. MIMO cards are supposed to improve signal reception.

I will not be moving my router for two reasons. First, I am using it as a switch to connect my two PCs, and when I get one, a PVR. I wanted the wireless feature origionaly just to use my laptop. But I realised that I could connect my dads company laptop to the network as well and that worked fine until the laptop died. I had also bought a wireless card for his PC but it cannot pickup a strong enough signal to work, but while the router is most likly sending a signal strong enough to be received, I do not believe the PCs wifi card is sending back a strong enough signal.

I have also considered getting a wireless repeater. Pluging it into a socket at the end of the hall facing my router, it would rebroadcast the signal in all directions, and it would be strong enough to be received by the PC in my dads office. But before I go down this route, I want to know how good repeaters are when working with encrypted wireless networks or WiFi networks in general.

PauloMN

Might I suggest you temporarily move your dad's PC down beside the wireless router to ensure low signal is not the problem? The fact that Windows is popping up a message that it finds a net makes me think it might be something else. Have you checked any installed firewall software on the PC to ensure it'll let local network traffic from the "new" network in?

Funnily enough when I got my NTL broadband installed recently, the engineer had awful trouble setting up the wireless part. Similar situation to what you describe above. I previously had DSL with another wireless router and I had changed the channel which improved the coverage quite a bit. So we changed the channel on the new wireless router and viola - no problems at all.

If you have other 2.4GHz wireless devices in your house (as I do) like video senders, this is worth doing. These devices operate in the same band as 802.11g wireless gear and so experimenting with the channel setting on the wireless router (or the channel used on the video sender for that matter) is worth the effort.

If you do need another antenna as you've suggested, I saw a couple of decent looking ones in Maplin only this weekend, around €25 and I'd imagine they would improve the coverage quite a bit.

vibe666

Also, the December 2005 issue of PC Plus has a big article on wifi tricks and tips that might be a help to you. I'm pretty sure you can get an archive of all their previous issues on the website if you can't find the magazine itself. The headline on the front cover says "Wi-Fi Tricks: Guarantee 45Mbps and 1,500ft range with our ultimate guide.

might well be worth a look for you.

rogue-entity

The problem has been sorted for the moment. I moved my dads pc from being on the floor, to sitting on top of the mini filing cabinet, with the rear facing the hall.
The I turned my router to face towards the pc. It connects with a low signal.

My dads PC runs windows 2000 (which is what came with it). He and my mum have seperate accounts on the machine. The wireless card is a Belkin High-Speed Mode Wireless Desktop Network Card. The problem is that the card wont work unless the user has admin privs. Basicly the radio on the card gets disabled. It is a bit of a pain as I wanted to set the parents accounts to Power User, to avoid them accidently messing up the settings. Does anyone have a solution to this?