How to boost sinal?

Desktop on 3rd floor with (wired to) Linksys router, laptop on 1st
floor. Laptop sometimes (often?) loses or won't make connection, and
always shows Strength: Low, with speeds all over the place,,,like 2
Mbs to 24 Mbs.

1. Is there an optimum positioning or orientation for the router or
its two antennas?

2. Query: I suppose I could moves router to 2nd floor and make desktop
also wireless? I'd rather not, tho.

Brad

You could try putting the aerials horizontally, basically is all down to
experimenting because radio signals travel is unpredictable.
Also put a card covered with silver foil bent into a V shape behind the
aerial(s), or else bent into a parabolic arc.

If your PCMCIA card sticks out from your laptop, you could try silver foil
underneath. Another alternative is an USB adapter on
a length of cable (up to 5m), which is much easier to position for best
signal (half an inch can make a difference) and to back up with silver foil
reflector.

Failing all that moving the router to middle floor should make big
difference.
Regards,
Martin

"Avalanche" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Desktop on 3rd floor with (wired to) Linksys router, laptop on 1st
> floor. Laptop sometimes (often?) loses or won't make connection, and
> always shows Strength: Low, with speeds all over the place,,,like 2
> Mbs to 24 Mbs.
>
> 1. Is there an optimum positioning or orientation for the router or
> its two antennas?
>
> 2. Query: I suppose I could moves router to 2nd floor and make
desktop
> also wireless? I'd rather not, tho.
>
> Brad

A repeater might work for you, if you have a wrt54g then a wap54g will
work well.
Also try orientating you antennas horizontal as this tends to be best
for most laptop reception,
or get a laptop card like this
http://www.hawkingtech.com/prodSpec.php?ProdID=235 .
I heard this card gets as good of reception as the pre-n but for only
40 bucks

Avalanche <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>Desktop on 3rd floor with (wired to) Linksys router, laptop on 1st
>floor. Laptop sometimes (often?) loses or won't make connection, and
>always shows Strength: Low, with speeds all over the place,,,like 2
>Mbs to 24 Mbs.
>
>1. Is there an optimum positioning or orientation for the router or
>its two antennas?

Yes. The position/orientation where you find it works best!

And, whatever that is, the only way to discover it is by
experimenting with antenna position/orientation.

The 2400MHz signals just do not go through any conductive
material that is more than about 4" square (or in diameter for a
circle), but they are often reflected off such surfaces and
sometimes the results can be either surprising or annoying.

For example, trying to get wifi to work from one building to
another can be a problem because walls that have fiber glass
insulation with a foil backing for a vapor barrier simply won't
pass a signal through. So the antennas have to be mounted at a
window. And you would expect the windows would have to be able
to see each other... but they might not need to!

If the windows face a building that also has metal in the walls,
everything might just work with the signal being reflected
instead of passing through the other building.

Typically if one antenna is oriented vertically, the other one
must be also. But sometimes the polarization of the signal is
changed as it is reflected off of another surface. Hence trying
different orientations for the antennas is worth doing and may
have surprisingly significant results (20 dB change in signal,
or maybe even more).

>2. Query: I suppose I could moves router to 2nd floor and make desktop
>also wireless? I'd rather not, tho.

If you are using 10 MB ethernet, go wireless. If you have
100Mbit, try to use wired connections to whatever degree you
can. Is it possible to reach the 2nd floor with CAT5 cable from
either the 1st or 3rd floor? If so, make those two a wired
network, and the other floor a wireless connection.

--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) (E-Mail Removed)