Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello!

I am in need of a better wireless broadband picky-uppy USB adapter thing. I 've moved rooms within my house, and can't access the internet from my new room as the router and so on are apparently out of the effective range of my feeble old one. It's an average sized detached house, opposite ends and floors, so it's a bit long but not ridiculous - I'd need, I don't know, maybe forty or fifty feet for a strong signal. Can anyone advise, please, as I have no idea what to actually search for, and only have lunchbreaks in which to search. In return, I will write your name in an obscure corner of the special collections stack in the shakespeare centre archive, for archaeologists to puzzle over in 300 years.

In my experience (we've had Voda, Orange and O2 ones in the office) they're all fucking dire. You need to be sat on top of a mast to get a semi-decent speed.

I think he means wifi not via 3G

Malc

Bah.
What ports do you have on the laptop beside USB?

Is it even a laptop?

Something like this might help at the PC end, and you can get better aerials for routers, too.
eBay has them cheaper.

Are they any better than, say, buying a whole new router? The inlaws have a rather large house that the wi-fi signal doesn't go around too well at all. I was going to look at getting them a new, better wireless router (they are using the one that AOL gave them), but bunging a different antenna on the existing router might work and be easier.....

They're cheaper. Plus you can get extension wires so you can put the aerials in a better place than the router.

A wireless repeater is perhaps the best option (short of cabling the house, of course).

I'm a bit fed up with the rubbish signal I get upstairs, but the only phone port is in the living room. What's the best option with my Sky Netgear router? Will that aerial fit it?

Yup. You're better off with a repeater half-way between the two, though.

So how does the repeater work? Do I just plug it in upstairs? I didn't even know they existed until you mentioned them.

It receives the wifi signal and broadcasts it again, so you need to put it between the signal and dead spot.

More info:
http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/Sh ... goryID=259

Ooh.

Some excellent and most kind suggestions so far, thank you. I'll have a shop around the links after hours.

I had a similar issue (except I wanted to be in the garden and get a wifi signal) so I got a Cantenna.

So far it's been brilliant. I've no idea if using it breaks any laws in the UK, but so far i haven't had any problems with the fuzz or any other authority types.

I ordered that repeater thing, with my FEARSOME INTERNET POWERS.

Thank you muchly. I shall begin the bepromised inscription tomorrow morning.

I'll be interested to see how well it works.

Me too. Sinister Guinea Pig can tell me if it's worth buying.

Remember kids, polarity matters. If your router has external aerials and you want to cover a house, try a horizontal polarity. This also helps if you are in a congested area as everyone else will be on vertical polarity. In our old house I changed to horizontal and not only did coverage in the house improve but I was suddenly able to walk 300 yards down the road while reading my emails on the Iphone and in a really congested town centre location.

BTW I have some aerial extension leads if anyone wants one.

+ extra BTW if your router has external aerials you can also try a higher gain aerial, aerials. My office Draytek has the high gains fitted.

Interesting. What kind of effect does the gain have on the computer side. I always assumed the weak link was laptop -> router, rather than the other way round, so would a high gain aerial on the router actually have any effect?

I'll try experimenting with the polarity, but I'd have assumed that the laptop (having the aerial going round the screen) was designed with vertical polarity in mind. Didn't really think that much about it though.

A higher gain aerial increases the power transmitted in certain directions but also increases the received signal from the same directions, rejecting anything from other directions. But you are right in that the laptop transmission doesn't change. But certainly when I used to have a single aerial wireless router I used to use an ultra directional aerial to get a signal to my office. It was the difference between no signal and a usable signal.

As an analogy your TV aerial is a Yagi. It is very high gain but only receives signal within a few degrees of margin. Move the aerial 10 degrees and the signal will go. You can also use Yagi's to transmit (I used to use them in radio for OB links). You could beam a signal miles but you had to get the direction right.

The laptop end you can't improve, but the router end you can. But beware snake oil salesman!

RE polarity, the aerial in some of the laptops I've played with (including this Mac) is horizontal. Go figure.

[edit] that's bollocks actually. Think it was my sisters Evesham.

It arrived today, before I even left for work, bizarrely. I will test it tonight and either report back, or find it fails to work and so spend the night crying and cuddling a printout of the beteo logo that I keep on hand for emergencies.

Rather annoying and somewhat unhelpful manual and quick setup instructions, but! I am online! In my new room! Exclaim!

What's the signal strength like?

Very strong - rated as good as I've ever had it (I'm far from a conos connoisu connoiser n expert and only use it for browsing and semi-frequent sub-gigabyte downloads). 100% right now, compared to 9-20% yesterday. It has wavered slightly once or twice, however I'm not sure whether that's the repeater's fault or something my housemates are doing. It's about 10 feet from my pc now, a floor up and two rooms away from the router itself. Provided it remains stable and passes the lan gaming test (which could take weeks, because charlotte plays mainly grindy rubbish like dota, the BIG TART), I'd recommend it.