NETGEAR DG834G signal

Hello guys
I am currently using a NETGEAR DG834G and I'm totally satisfied with it but I don't know if the wireless is working fine
my problem (if any) is the signal power
the router is in my bedroom and when I try to use my laptop in my living room I hardly can get the signal
the router is at roughly 7 meters from there and there are 3 walls between the router and the living room
two are about 30 cm, the other one is smaller, but there are a couple of doors so the signal is likely to easily go through them, and btw I thought it would have passed them anyway
the first wall is just behind the router
is this the standard performance? is there a way to boost the signal?

its always hard to give a definite answer without being there, howerver there are a few general rules of thumb

1, if possible try to use channel 6, generaly speaking most antennas will be tuned to this mid point frequency, also a lot of the channels have a small amount of overlap with their neighbourghing channel, with the exception of channel 1, 11 and 6.

2, carry out a wirless audit and make sure that no other nearby set up is using the same channel, this can cause interference.

3, keep all other wirless electrical devices as far away as possible. This is also true with microwave ovens as these cook your food using almost the same frequency as your wireless router

4 download netstumbler and play around with it. use it to check signal strength, check for other networks etc. try moving things about one at a time (ie objects that may interfere, network card, router etc) then go back and see if there any improvment.

hope this helps
si

__________________
to infinity and beyond (assuming a perfect vacum of course)

I have switched to channel 6, I didn't notice any difference, but the connection has been working better lately (even before switching channel)

I downloaded netstumbler but didn't get anything special out of it, it just finds my network (and no other networks, other houses are at least at 10 meters of distance) but I don't know what to do with it

another question:

I noticed that when I use the wireless connection to download a rather large file it was downloading at 50/60 KB/s (in the situation above, 7-8 meters from the router with walls etc) instead from the PCs connected with cables the speed is ~240 KB/s (2 mbit line)
is that normal for download speed to be affected by this?

anyway it might have been a slow server, I should try again from other servers...