No stable 54Mbit/sec anymore,also low signal for no reason at all

My PC is connected to the internet and through it wirelessly another PC,a laptop,a Wii console,a PSP and a DS.So,lottsa wireless in the house.I have my PC act as a AP with a Gigabyte GN-WPKG (PCI,54Mbit).

Anyway,problem is for no particular reason,my AP is not running at a stable 54Mbit/sec anymore,and can get pretty low,even below 10Mbit/sec. This speed changes frequently,and quite randomly,from a few seconds to a minute.

Furthermore,the signal strength has become so weak,that e.g. the Wii console can no longer easily scan it,and I have to get my PSP or DS exactly next to the wireless card just to get a 50%-70% signal strength.

Can anybody tell me what went wrong and what can I do to fix that? Thanks in advance.

There are many factors that can affect what you are describing.

Here are some things to concider/look at

Have you recently changed/upgraded the drivers for the GN-WPKG. This may also have happened as an automatic update.

Has someone in your area decided to put up a wireless network on the same channel (try changing channels). This can affect signal quality.

The GN-WPKG may just be faulty.

There may be others but this is about all I can flip off quickly.

Regards

Fred

You can try buying a new antenna(s) for you router. Did that for my D-link DBR-2310, and I now get between 90 and 100% on all of my computers. Frys usually has a good selection to choose from, so that would be the best place to look first. And like FredZ said, changing channels can improve you signal by quite a lot, depending on the environmental factors, especially if you have other people in your neighborhood on the same channel, or if you have a lot of interference (2.4 gHz phones). Overall, the most simple and cheapest solution is to buy an antenna (got my 10dBi antenna at frys for 20$), and if worse comes to worse, you may need to buy a repeater.

Borgslayer