802.11b performance through walls?

I recently decided to have a tinker with wireless kit cuz I'm sick of cables snaking all over the house I bought a 3Com® OfficeConnect® Wireless 11g Access Point and a couple of wireless cards (a Dlink for my laptop, and a cheapo DSE jobbie for my PVR PC). Got everything set up fine, but my machines are having problems 'seeing' the AP in other rooms in the house.

Here's a scale blueprint (j/k) of the part of my house in question:



Now, my PVR normally sits on the desk in my room and can see the AP fine wtih a strong signal (no surprises there). But when I moved it to the table in the lounge, it got a very weak signal.

I tried sitting on the couch with my laptop and I couldn't get a signal at all, unless I stood up with it and walked a pace forward so I was more in-line with the door. I got a very weak signal there.

So what's going on? Is wireless performance through two walls really this bad? Or is the hardware to blame? I've heard of people having an AP downstairs and using their laptop upstairs without any problems, so it must work through ceilings ok...

Any help appreciated TIA

It really depends on what the walls are made out of. If you've got concrete walls, then the signal will not pass through them and the weak signal that you're getting may have been bounced around quite a bit before it got to you.

As for normal gib board walls, the signal should pass through them with little trouble (in theory)

Try moving your AP to somewhere closer to where you'll be using it, or try it in different places to see which one works best. There's no real exact science to it as it's hard to see what the radio waves are exactly doing, so just use the trial and error approach.

hehe... see... thats why u move to south auckland, where the walls etc are made of k^thin material


i have a 802.11b setup, and i can get a signal anywhere in the house, and also down the drive, and halfway down the road :P


so yea... and also.. i have wired country connex, so i can go down road, in car or something, and sutf intarwebnet @ 1mbit sec


tis good