Help! Can't get a strong signal in one room

I'm going crazy here. I've been to costco, circuit city, best buy,
etc..

This is the situation. The motorola cable modem is upstairs. It was
connected to a netgear wgr614 wireless router. Everything in the
house is great except for one room - the room I just put a desktop PC
into. The signal hovers around 'low' and 'very low'.

So. I tried the following:

Hooked up my dlink di-524 instead of the netgear. no improvement.
Bought (and now returned) a dlink antenna ant24-0700. no improvement
Bought a buffalo wireless G - MIMO router promising higher speed/
better range. slight improvement - but nothing better than 'low'.
bought a dlink rangebooster N router (promising higher speed/better
range) - worse

The PC downstairs has a buffalo USB adaptor connected to a 10 ft
extension cord to get as close to the door as possible.

Any ideas? Should i simply try an extender/booster and place it
outside the door (i did a test with a wireless pc - outside the door
is 'good' but inside is 'low'.

any other suggestions?

I even made a low-rent antenna from a strainer which didn't see to do
anything but frustrate me more :)

crash41 <crash41@gmail.com> hath wroth:

>I'm going crazy here. I've been to costco, circuit city, best buy,
>etc..
>
>This is the situation. The motorola cable modem is upstairs. It was
>connected to a netgear wgr614 wireless router. Everything in the
>house is great except for one room - the room I just put a desktop PC
>into. The signal hovers around 'low' and 'very low'.
>
>So. I tried the following:
>
>Hooked up my dlink di-524 instead of the netgear. no improvement.
>Bought (and now returned) a dlink antenna ant24-0700. no improvement
>Bought a buffalo wireless G - MIMO router promising higher speed/
>better range. slight improvement - but nothing better than 'low'.
>bought a dlink rangebooster N router (promising higher speed/better
>range) - worse
>
>The PC downstairs has a buffalo USB adaptor connected to a 10 ft
>extension cord to get as close to the door as possible.
>
>Any ideas? Should i simply try an extender/booster and place it
>outside the door (i did a test with a wireless pc - outside the door
>is 'good' but inside is 'low'.
>
>any other suggestions?
>
>I even made a low-rent antenna from a strainer which didn't see to do
>anything but frustrate me more :)

Instead of changing the wireless router repeatedly, perhaps the
problem is at the Buffalo USB radio end? The USB radios are not known
for spectacular range because of the tiny internal antenna. I suggest
you borrow someones wireless laptop and try it in this black hole of a
room. If the laptop works well, then there's something wrong with the
USB radio.

Kinda also sounds like this room has aluminium foil backed insulation
in the walls. If that's the case, no RF is going to get in or out.
Remove one of the electrical wall plates and see if there's any
aluminium foil inside the walls. If you have attic access, that's
another place to look inside the walls.

There are also alternatives to wireless, that will work in your
situation. See:

Power Line networking:
<http://www.homeplug.com>

Phone line networking:
<http://www.homepna.com>

CATV coax sharing:
<http://www.coaxsys.com>
<http://www.multilet.com>
<http://www.mocalliance.org>

Ethernet extenders:
<http://www.patton.com/products/pe_products.asp?category=146>

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

In article <1179889534.674250.54360@g4g2000hsf.googlegroups.c om>,
crash41 <crash41@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm going crazy here. I've been to costco, circuit city, best buy,
> etc..
....
> Any ideas? Should i simply try an extender/booster and place it
> outside the door (i did a test with a wireless pc - outside the door
> is 'good' but inside is 'low'.

Before going to extremes, try moving the router around in the room.
Seriously, that can make an amazing difference. And if it doesn't, at
least it hasn't cost anything to try.

Here's an example. My house looks like this:

^
|
+-------+--+ N
| |__|
| 1|B |
+----- +----+--------+
| A C| |
| D |
+--------------+-E- |
| | |
| | 2|
+--------------+------+

I've left out a few interior walls. Router is at point 1, as is my home
server. Computer I normally use is at point 2. Signal varied from OK
to poor. Doing a maximum transfer rate test (computer at 2 in a loop
just blasting data over a TCP connections to server at 1, measuring the
delivered data rate at the server) I was getting about 3-6 mbit/second.

Fiddling with the angle of the router and the angles of its two factory
antennas did not make much difference.

Simply moving the router 3 feet north boosted it to 10-12 mbit/second.

Then fiddling with the antenna angles got it to a steady 25-27
mbit/second.

Point A is my dishwasher, B is my laundry room, C is my range, and D is
my refrigerator. So, with the wrong placement of the router, there
might have been one or more big metal appliances between the router and
the computer, and moving it a little may have found a spot where it has
a path only obstructed by walls. (Oh, E is the fireplace. I don't know
if that has any metal lining or anything like that to block a wireless
signal).

--
--Tim Smith