Boosting/extending wireless signal from new Sky router.

John_V85 · 6 Dec 2007 at 22:45

Hello

We have just switched from BT to Sky broadband and wish to place the router in the living room so we can connect it via cable to the PS3. Anyway, now there is no signal in the bedrooms where computers are so no internet connection.

Our flat doesn't lend itself for good signal, but the Sky router doesn't seem particularly great. In any event we have tested it in several locations in the living room and no joy.

So the question is: is there a way we can get a good signal in the bedrooms, e.g. by boosting the signal in some way or adding another box somewhere in the flat?

There are functional phone sockets in the bedroom and living room.

Thanks in advance

John

GeX · 6 Dec 2007 at 23:34

if you get any access point, or a router and put that upstairs and run a cable from the new router to upstairs and have two wireless networks - one better for upstairs.

but if you are doing that, you may as well just leave the router where it is now and run a cable to the PS3.

John_V85 · 7 Dec 2007 at 08:06

any other options. It is not really practical to run a cable.

Avalon · 7 Dec 2007 at 12:11

In order of cost:

Parabolic, Bigger ariel (assuming it's standard), power line or run cable/ap buy a better router.

You mention other sockets, what about moving the router to the other one and see if you get any better signal quality ? Netstumbler would be a good idea as well...

John_V85 · 8 Dec 2007 at 15:06

Thanks for the suggestions, but there appears nothing can be done. Either (a) the Sky wireless router is in the living room so the PS3 can connect via ethernet, but the computers in the bedrooms get no signal; or (b) the router is in the bedroom in which case the internet on the computer works but the PS3 can't be connected via ethernet.

tolien · 8 Dec 2007 at 16:54

If the router from Sky does it, what about another AP running WDS?
Won't need a cable, but it'll need to be in a place where it can pick up the DG834 as well as be picked up by the other machines.

BigChin1 · 11 Dec 2007 at 20:16

I also recently moved to Sky and unfortunately the new black Sky router doesn't appear to support WDS. It is a shame that Sky try to restrict you to only using the routers they supply as they are lacking in advanced features. For me I really miss the ability to wake up my computer remotely (WOL), but this router won't allow broadcast packets to be sent over my LAN from an outside source.

The previous Sky router (Netgear DG834) was relatively easy to extract your ADSL user/pass from and then change the firmware. With the new one (mine a Netgear, model number probably DG934; though there's also a Sagem version) there is currently no method for extracting the user/pass and therefore no option to use another router (which goes against Skys T&C's anyway, but hey).