WiFi router in central location, but...

I just had a second cable modem line brought into the central-most part
of my house so that I could move my wireless router there in hopes of
distributing the signal more evenly. I made sure that its antennas are
about 1 foot away from the wall, and are up high. I do indeed have a
more "even" signal throughout the house, but all computers with
wireless cards in them only have about half the total signal they
should be getting, IMHO. I have all D-Link equipment (router and
wireless NICs) on an 802.11b network.

I keep reading about how you should have your wireless antennas
(broadcasters and receivers) be away from walls and such, but that's
just not practical. Most normal people have their computers on a desk
up next to a wall, not sitting out in the middle of a room.

How do I get more signal to reach the antennas on the networking cards
in these computers? Do I really have to go and buy an $85-$100 high
gain antenna to uni-directionally blast each computer? Or a second
wireless range extender for $80? That just seems dumb and a waste of
money.

Thanks for any help you can give.

On 19 May 2005 12:57:20 -0700, (E-Mail Removed) wrote:

>How do I get more signal to reach the antennas on the networking cards
>in these computers? Do I really have to go and buy an $85-$100 high
>gain antenna to uni-directionally blast each computer? Or a second
>wireless range extender for $80? That just seems dumb and a waste of
>money.


A omnidirectional range extender seems like the sensible choice to me.

Info abound on home-made antennas but they tend to be unidirectional.

$80 bux or u waste time and trial&error$. Mind u, most of us here are
not WiFi engineers, if we were, we wouldn't be hanging here.

If u believe in the center-of-the-house theory, got an attic? even a
crawl space, try there.

Personally, I would just spend the 80 bux.

Thanks. Have already spent more money than should be necessary just to
set it all up the way I've got it now. I would try mounting the router
in the attic, but there is no graceful way to snake the cable modem WAN
connection through the cieling without it looking weird. Might try
piecing together a homemade unidirectional antenna if nothing else
works.

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> Thanks. Have already spent more money than should be necessary just to
> set it all up the way I've got it now. I would try mounting the router
> in the attic, but there is no graceful way to snake the cable modem WAN
> connection through the cieling without it looking weird. Might try
> piecing together a homemade unidirectional antenna if nothing else
> works.

Ever tried making a "cantenna"? :-)

Lincomatic's Homebrew WiFi Antennae
http://www.lincomatic.com/wireless/homebrewant.html

Yousuf Khan

Thanks. Yeah, I reviewed a bunch of those, but in my risk assessment,
I figured it would be quicker to pay $20 to have Comcast install a
cable modem connection in a second room to centralize the modem and
router. Turns out that they were a no-show on the first appointment,
so the second install was free!!

forgot to clarify that the reason my router's omnidirectional antennas
were weak was that I hadn't fiddled with the router's position enough.
I turned it 90 degrees to the right so that the back of the unit was
facing outward and lo and behold, I got a better signal all around.