N router and N usb adapter , but jesus is it slow!

Bengaboy · 3 Feb 2009 at 21:37

Hi guys, I have a netgear N router along with the Netgear N dongle and for some reason, it has a very, very poor signal.

The router is at the front of the house in my bedroom and the pc is now in the back of the house in the dining room.

Probably about 10 - 15 meters distance diagonally. Not far for N enabled gear surely!

Also, above where the pc is, is my brothers bedroom. He uses his xbox 360 wirelessly and complains quite often about the lack of signal / speed.

Is there anything I can do on the router to increase the range and speed? Not very happy considering I have forked out about £120 on top end stuff that aint doing its job

Thanks a lot

Dist · 3 Feb 2009 at 21:57

Whats the inside of your house like? 10-15 meters may not seem like much, but if you have solid brick walls, or just lots of material between the router and the adapter then you wont get much of a signal.

Bengaboy · 3 Feb 2009 at 22:14

Dist said:
Whats the inside of your house like? 10-15 meters may not seem like much, but if you have solid brick walls, or just lots of material between the router and the adapter then you wont get much of a signal.

Well the house is a newish house - built in the 1960's , so dont think it would be too much of an issue?

Apart from that, not a lot really

Dist · 3 Feb 2009 at 23:13

Have you checked the channel you are using? Sometime people simply turn on their router and leave it on the default channel, which could mean many people within the same area trying to use the same channel to operate different LANs.

When doing a scan using my wrt54gl i notice that there are 4 access points all using channel 6 (2.437 GHz), yet there are 9 unused channels, 6 just happens to be a common default channel and so it gets crowded.

Also I'm not sure why but for me some channels are better then other. Even when there are no other people using a channel, i can get worse signal on it some times then i do on other unused channels.