Wireless signal strenght?

[ThundyCat]

Wireless signal strength?

Hi guys I currently have virgin cable 20meg and have a linksys wireless router setup.

If I use my laptop upstairs It can only manage to receive a very poor signal?

As you can imagine the internet chugs along like a tortoise through treacle.

So basically is there any way of boosting the siginal from the router,or tweaking the router settings to improve signal strength?

cheers,

Thundy.

 

[Dist]

Depending on what router you have, it should be possible to do a wireless survey to check what other wireless networks are in the area and what channel they operate on. Because wireless channels heavily overlap, you should choose a channel for your network that is not only not used by another wireless network, but as as far away as possible.

Also i am not sure how much difference it will make, but make sure you are not pointing your antenna at your laptop. The signal radiates from the sides of the antenna with the top and bottom being the weakest parts, so have the side of the antenna pointed towards where you laptop is (again, i am not sure how much difference this will make, and it wont help if you move around with your laptop, but every little helps).

 

[Firegod]

You could get one of those fancy Dual-Band (5GHz) Wireless-N Access Points and hook that up into your Router. Should improve the signal strength and have less interference (from what I've read).

EDIT: Something like this:- D-Link DAP-1522

 

[Dist]

An 802.11n access point will only help if the end device is also compatible with the 802.11n standard. Inside a house it will have a signal advantage over previous wireless standards as the MIMO technology makes use of multiple antennas to help solve the problem with multipath signals (which happen in an envrionment where a signal can bounce of walls and objects and would normaly cause interferance in an older wireless syetem).