how to boost wireless range

Local H Jay

so i'm hooking up my 360 via a laptop and using it to connect to live. everything works fine, until i play a game with more than 2-3 people, then it goes to shit.
i noticed that my bars on the laptop read 2/5, sometimes 3/5 in the location where my 360 is. is there any way to boost the wireless range so i have better connectivity? i don't want an official xbox wireless dongle since they are retardedly high priced.
my router is linksys, not sure on the model but it's pretty standard and it's the 'g' classification, not b or the other one.

Doc

Is it at all possible to move the modem and router next to the xbox, then connect them with a cable? I was having all sorts of latency and throughput issues until I did that.

Local H Jay

ehhhhhhhh
not so much
i seriously would have by now, since i own a 20ft ethernet cable
no dice

Szechuanosaurus

I think you can convert a regular router to work the same as the xbox dongle via firmware flashes etc. but jees what an effort, save five hours of your life and just pay the extra £20 or whatever for the proprietary hardware.

DrFrylock

So if I get this straight, you are basically using your laptop as a (large, expensive) wired->wireless bridge adapter. I'm not sure why you think replacing it with the Official Xbox Wired->Wireless Bridge adapter would be any better, since it's basically doing the same thing.

I've never had good luck with wireless repeaters before, but they do exist. The problem is they repeat, so every packet that gets sent to them gets processed and retransmitted. This can bog down your network somewhat.

One thing that might be more convenient with a wireless gaming adapter is running a long ethernet cable between the gaming adapter and your Xbox so the wireless part of the adapter can be closer/in a better signal area than the Xbox or your laptop.

All wireless-G "gaming adapters" (really just bridges) will work fine with the Xbox, with the caveat that you can configure the IP and WPA/WEP/whatever settings directly from the Xbox if you use the Official Xbox Wireless Adapter [TM]. I used to use an old Wireless-B WET11 bridge just to connect to Live for updates and stuff like that. I had to configure it the first time from my real computer, but after that it was plug and play.

Local H Jay

well, my laptop is something i already have, and dropping $100 on the official dongle isn't what i really want to do when i have as few games as i do now
i will try the 20ft cable and having the laptop closer to the router, but really the story is i'm a cheap bastard and wanted this to work, but it's sooooo slooooow. demo downloads take hours, but netflix amazingly works better than on the laptop (no buffering aside from the inital load).
so, a repeater is a bad idea? these seem like they might work since i rarely have much going on in my network anyway

DrFrylock

How is a repeater going to be cheaper than the $100 dongle or a $50 used/non-Xbox dongle?

The other option is to upgrade your antennas, of course. It's doubtful that you'd be able to upgrade the antennas on your laptop, but you might be able to upgrade the ones on your router. That might be slightly cheaper but I'm not sure how much it's going to help.

Krikee

If you decide on the dongle, apparently the FCC recently had a Microsoft 802.1n adapter pass through their hands (as 802.1n was finalized on the 11th) so you might hold off on that route.

Metalbourne

The United States Air Force, arguably the highest tech and best trained air force in the world, used a setup like this one

Local H Jay

Metalbourne wrote: »

The United States Air Force, arguably the highest tech and best trained air force in the world, used a setup like this one

if i do this and it doesn't work, well, i will have wasted quite some time

Hlubocky

I bought a dlink external antenna which seemed to help out with reception in my building. Another thing you can do is install dd-wrt and increase the power of the signal (not too high though).

Captain Vash

Local H Jay wrote: »

Metalbourne wrote: »

The United States Air Force, arguably the highest tech and best trained air force in the world, used a setup like this one

if i do this and it doesn't work, well, i will have wasted quite some time

Time spent on geeky/nerdy DIY projects is never time wasted.

Plus, if it's good enough for the army, who are you to question it?

Smurph

I use something like this: WAP

My wireless router is in my bedroom, 360 in the living room. I set this up next to the 360 and have it pick up the wifi and then connect it to the 360 via a regular Ethernet cable. No firmware flashing necessary and it's a lot cheaper than buying the Microsoft dongle. Plus you could use it with things other than an xbox if you wanted to.

Local H Jay

Smurph wrote: »

I use something like this: WAP

My wireless router is in my bedroom, 360 in the living room. I set this up next to the 360 and have it pick up the wifi and then connect it to the 360 via a regular Ethernet cable. No firmware flashing necessary and it's a lot cheaper than buying the Microsoft dongle. Plus you could use it with things other than an xbox if you wanted to.

i looked them up, but this is by far the cheapest. if the pringles don't work out, this is my next step!
$30 is way more my price range

Daenris

How far away is the router? The cheapest solution that will give you the best signal would probably be just to buy a longer ethernet cable, unless your router is prohibitively far away. Even a 100' cable can be found for $25 or less.

Local H Jay

to put it this way
the router is in another building

Willeth

I think that might be your problem.

You don't know what provider you're using - chances are your wireless isn't the issue, it's that you're using a ton of bandwidth and the router/ISP is throttling that.

Local H Jay

haha, well, not exactly
but maybe
fuck

Metalbourne

Captain Vash wrote: »

Local H Jay wrote: »

Metalbourne wrote: »

The United States Air Force, arguably the highest tech and best trained air force in the world, used a setup like this one

if i do this and it doesn't work, well, i will have wasted quite some time

Time spent on geeky/nerdy DIY projects is never time wasted.

Plus, if it's good enough for the army, who are you to question it?

Air Force. They're the smart branch.

Page-

Make sure your router is set up properly as well. I get the same kind of problems when I use my wireless in the basement with the router in the living room upstairs. For a while someone kept sticking it next to their laptop and the putting the phone on top. Dur. I wouldn't notice till I was in a game or something and then everything would clog up and drop out. Once I'd moved the router back to an open space without anything to interfere with it things got back to normal.

But in another building? Ouch. I can't play XBL wireless when the 360 and router are in the same room. Though I have a very low tolerance for lag.

Doc

I think he may not have access to the router to make sure it's set up properly.

Figgy

Well, I recently purchase an Ethernet-over-Power kit, which cost me $100. I didn't want to run wires in an ugly fashion, and I didn't want to drop $100 on the wireless dongle for an inevitable shitty connection.

It's basically two plug-in units the size of a Glade Air Freshener. One goes beside your router and has a short Ethernet cable to one of the wired ports. The other unit goes beside your Xbox and has another short Ethernet running to that. It's a wired connection that uses your home's electrical outlets to bridge the connection.

So nice.

Raiden333

How has this not been posted here yet?

Infinite Solutions

Yes, it's a joke.

Willeth

For what it's worth, putting my wireless dongle in a saucepan allowed me to get a better signal in my old house.