Best location for wireless router?

julianhj · 5 Aug 2009 at 18:37

I noted a comment on the room gallery stating that placing a wireless router on the floor (as opposed to higher up I guess) is not ideal.

Are there any guidelines on this? Mine is on the floor by the front door, as I was told that you should place it as close to the BT master socket as possible. When I plugged it in to another socket only a couple of metres away when I first moved in, the signal dropped to virtually nothing...

samuria · 6 Aug 2009 at 01:00

Away from electrical equipment including house wiring away from the wall higher the better within reason. In free space the pattern will be a circle if its by a wall it will be egg shaped. It all depends were the pc is going to be a few feet can make a lot of difference

Caged · 6 Aug 2009 at 01:19

My router is 2ft from the BT socket (filtered faceplace), and the wireless AP is in the loft. Full 54mbps signal from everywhere, including down the end of the garden.

Seperating the router and the wireless AP is the best way to get a combination of decent wifi coverage and good sync speed.

julianhj · 6 Aug 2009 at 08:56

Hmmm. My router is the standard thing supplied by Be around three years ago. I live in a three storey new build, my Desktop is on the top floor, the laptop lives in the lounge on the middle floor and the router is on the ground floor.

Namsnik · 11 Aug 2009 at 21:40

Two issues
- Broadband connection quality and hence speed.
- Wireless signal quality/strength and hence speed

For the first you need either to connect to the BT master socket with a short, quality lead OR hardwire telephone line from there to wherever you want your router. Use high quality twisted pair cable, do not run parallel to mains cable within a foot. I use Cat5E which is unnecessarily thick as it has more pairs than needed - but I distribute a filtered and an unfiltered line using it. Most BT installed wiring is only voice quality after the master socket.

For the second you want to minimise the straight-line distance from router to pc / laptop but bearing in mind that walls etc, especially solid walls greatly reduce the signal.

You can of course move your router to different locations and observe the signal strength on your laptop. Don't need internet connection for this or to fully understand the shape of the signal field.
Also of course consider how easy it is to get good quality phone line wiring to the location.

The phone line quality will be affected adversely if you don't use filters. I went for a single filter serving the whole house and distribute filtered and unfiltered lines around using Cat5e cable. This site is good.
http://www.adslnation.com/products/xte2005.php

wooden floors and ceilings impede the signal far less than brick walls