Topic: Wifi extension

[Moreno]

Hi guys,


I have been having trouble with my sky wireless router. The signal kept dropping and leaving me with out internet. I finally decided to have a look and thought that changing the channel would work. This has fixed the dropping of signal problem, but now my media player downstairs is only picking up a very weak signal and will not even show the internet.

Is their anything I have to change downstairs or is it simply a fact of buying some kind of stronger aerial or something for the media pc? The netgear sky router has no aerials, will this make a difference?

[sam]

on the machine upstairs did you change the channel used by the wifi card? If so you should probably do the same downstairs - also how strong was the connection downstairs before the change? might be worth playing around with the orientation of the antennas as well.

[Moreno]

Well i changed the channel in the router setup, not on any of the laptops.....so would I have to change anything on the vista media player downstairs.....??

Well the media player downstairs has an aerial from the belkin wireless card, but the netgear sky router does not have any aerials.

[Sandra]

The signal kept dropping and leaving me with out internet.

Do you mean the line dropped or just the wi fi part of it ?

The line wouldnt be affected by the wi fi side but different channels may work better in some areas than others.
You shouldnt need to select a channel on the laptop/pc end as that should look for any connection in range of you laptop/pc.
Try each one of the different channels and see which gives you the maximum strength on the pc that you are having problems with and set the router to use that one.

[sam]

if you make no progress it can be worth changing the channels on the cards manually, as sometimes they don't look automatically.

Also what signal strength are your laptops recieving downstaris?

[Moreno]

I am getting between 2 and 4 bars on the laptops.....

One thing I was going to ask, is it possible to just buy another sky router and plug it in downstairs while the other is connected upstairs just by ethernet? Is this a stupid question? WIll it screw up the network?

[Rik]

You can't connect two ADSL devices to the line at the same time.

[Moreno]

ok, thats that out the window.....

[Moreno]

Ok, I am going to go out and look for a higher gain wifi network card....do they exist?

Failing that, can I attach a unit to the main router via ethernet and bring it half way between the media player and router and it would act as a bridge?

[Sandra]

There is a device on the market that would overcome your problems, its not cheap though.
One unit plugs into the mains socket with an ethernet lead to the router and a second unit connects by ethernet to the pc.
I will see if I can find a link for it later.

Is it not possible to run an ethernet cable upstairs in anyway as that would be the cheapest and most reliable option?

[Sandra]

This is one of the cheapest that I could find at £26-99, dont forget that you would need 2, one to your router and one to your PC.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/110264

Only works at 14mb but should be fine unless you are transferring data over your network.

More here :

http://www.ebuyer.com/cat/Wired/subcat/Homeplug

Some up to 85mb but more expensive.

[Moreno]

Thanks for that Sandra, not sure thats the way I want to go, but looks like the last resort and a good one.

Do you know of any unit which sits connected to the sky router by ethernet, but say at the top of the stairs so its closer to the media player downstairs....therefore broadcasts the signal downstairs more?

[Sandra]

You could presumably use a Wi Fi access point, not sure if you would have to disable the routers Wi Fi in case of conflicts or not though 

[Moreno]

I have the following

http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=316

Will this work in the same way as an access point?

[Sandra]

Yes that should work fine, as I said you would probably need to disable the wifi in your main router or possibly just set it to a different encryption code.