Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings

Here at home, we have a wireless network, necessitated by the fact that the house we’re renting is not wired for networking. The problem we have is that we’ve got computers upstairs and downstairs that all need to be on the network. At the moment, the wireless router is upstairs in the master bedroom, which is about as far away from our downstairs “office” computers as it can be. As a result, the connectivity can be less than ideal. In fact, Susan’s computer falls off the network with frustrating frequency.

I’ve been trying to figure out what our options are to improve this situation. There are several options:

• Relocate the router
• Put a bigger antenna on the router
• Add another access point/router/repeater

The first option would be the cheapest, but I’m doubtful about whether it would be worth the effort. The location of the router is dictated by the location of the cable outlets in the house (since our internet service is via cable-modem). I’ll probably try it though. I should see if there are any kind of tools that could give me measurable metrics on the before-and-after signal strength.

The second option would be fairly inexpensive, but again, I’m doubtful about how much it would help.

The last option is one I’ve started to do a little bit of research on. I was all set to buy a D-Link DLW-G800AP until I saw the little footnote that says that it will only repeat the signal of a DI-624 router. We have a DI-524.

What are my other options? I’m not sure how wireless access points correspond to wired hubs. If this was a wired network, I’d just add a hub downstairs and connect it to the hub upstairs. If I add an AP to our network (but not in repeater mode), can I make it do the same thing?

Update: Just before I posted this, I remembered that I had NetStumbler installed, so I fired it up. I knew that there were a couple of other APs in the neighborhood that we can see, but what I finally noticed was that they were using the same channel as us. I’ve changed the channel that our router uses. We’ll see if that improves anything. I’m still interested in boosting our signal strength, though.