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Effective way of boosting wireless signal?

T

TechnoPro

Golden Member
I was at a client's house when they started to complain about the internet connection on one of their PCs. They have a D-Link 802.11b wireless router in the basement connected directly to PC1. PC2 is on the 1st floor on the other end of the house. It connects with a D-Link Wireless PCI card. As follows:

PC2 -------------------------------------- (1st Floor)

---------------------------- Router / PC1 (Basement)

Signal strength varies from 1 bar to non-existant on PC2. Adding insult to injury, Windows picks up on 2 other wireless netowrks in the area...

I had a few thoughts regarging a solution and am looking for feedback:

[1]

Add an access point on the 1st floor above the router.

PC2 ----------------- AP ----------------- (1st Floor)

---------------------------- Router / PC1 (Basement)

[2] Add upgraded antennas on one/both ends.

[3] Add the access point & antennas.

[4] Have a cat5 cable run from basement to 1st floor.

As far as most bang for the buck, I am leaning towards the wired solution. Any opinions?
 
upgrade to 802.11G router... easist... might not need to even change pc2's wifi card but it works best if you do
 
Originally posted by: Savarak
upgrade to 802.11G router...
Click to expand...
This seems to depend somewhat on brand. My Actiontec 802.11G's signal won't go halfway across the house, but I get a good signal from my Linksys 802.11B. Of course, the Linksys has two fairly useful antennas, compared to the Actiontec's one poor one, so that might be all the difference.
 
Moving to .11g will not extend your range. What it will do is give the cells higher throughput down the ladder. 2.4 Ghz radio's at say, 30 mW will have the same range. Modulation, radio quality and a few other factors have an affect. b or g, meaningless to range ultimately. Going .11g is definitely NOT a solution for poor coverage on an .11b AP infrastructure.

If you can run a wire the obviously that is the choice. You'll have to do that anyway by the way if you want to use an AP there at full effect. If your suggesting in the first solution to use it as a repeater then I would say do that if it is your last and only option. Repeating is a last resort move for a WLAN. Run a drop to the PC and you can always use that run for an AP if you add wireless clients.
 
Originally posted by: ktwebb
Moving to .11g will not extend your range. What it will do is give the cells higher throughput down the ladder. 2.4 Ghz radio's at say, 30 mW will have the same range. Modulation, radio quality and a few other factors have an affect. b or g, meaningless to range ultimately. Going .11g is definitely NOT a solution for poor coverage on an .11b AP infrastructure.

If you can run a wire the obviously that is the choice. You'll have to do that anyway by the way if you want to use an AP there at full effect. If your suggesting in the first solution to use it as a repeater then I would say do that if it is your last and only option. Repeating is a last resort move for a WLAN. Run a drop to the PC and you can always use that run for an AP if you add wireless clients.
Click to expand...

Why is repeating a last resort?
 
Why is repeating a last resort?
Click to expand...

You shouldn't have to do that in such a short distance. You might as well run some CAT5 across the basement ceiling if you want the extra hardware in the building.

I suggest testing another wireless router in the house to see if it helps. Maybe the DLink that is there is bad, or just not strong enough. Maybe they have some strange construction methods in the house which are limiting the signal strength. Who knows.

Another thing to try is to bring in a laptop with wireless, then watch the signal strength as you walk around the building. Maybe some rooms are better than others. I know in my apartment I can watch the signal go up and down as I walk into different rooms. It drops a lot in some places because of the many coats of paint on the walls, and probably even ancient lead paint in there somewhere...
 
i for one had a great improvement going from .11b to .11g
my pcs are up in the second floor and first floor of my house, and with .11b we've gotten horrible connections with my .11b router in the basement(directly connected to the first phone line from the outside). going to .11g, the signal for the upstairs computer went from 1 bar at 5-11mps to 3 bars at 24mps stable
 
Does 802.11g provides more Distance than 802.11b?

The answer is Yes and No.

Since the frequency and the output power of 802.11b and 802.11g hardware are similar, the general distance that they cover is similar.

That means that if you have an envioroment that "Kills" the signal it will "Kill" them both.

However if you have a weak unusable 801.11b signal at 50? (just a numerical example) 802.11g might provide a working signal at the same distance since it yields more bandwidth.

The above is a Quote from: http://www.ezlan.net/Wireless_Hardware.html


Repeater might help under certain situation.

However: It is more expensive than other Entry Level hardware.

It needs to be paired with the same Chipset Wireless source.

It can not be Daisy Chained.

It Cuts the Output Signal into half.

:sun:
 
i for one had a great improvement going from .11b to .11g
Click to expand...

You had great improvement going from one AP to another. Your outward cells were higher bandwidth. going to a .11g ap, as a technology, didn't improve your overall range, the radios, perhaps the radiators did.
 
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