Wireless 2: Rangening Harder

urahonky

All stupid thread titles aside: I've run into the same problem I did a few months back. I made a thread about extending my wireless signal. Well... Now it's back to it's normal self.

I've flashed the router (Linksys 54G) with DD-WRT and increased the wireless strength to near max. That worked for a while, but now I'm back to low. Even worse, now in Diablo 2 I get booted every few hours (1 or 2).

It's starting to get annoying. Is there an actual router that will give me a stronger signal? Should I buy pre-N wireless? Will that do anything? It's getting really annoying to drop wireless signal every so often.

urahonky

Hmmm... I changed my wireless signal from Mixed to G-only and it seemed to have improved it a bit. Still getting a low signal, but I'm surfing a lot faster.

Frem

I've read that turning the router signal up too much can drown out the signals your laptop is using to reply.

(Personally, I just made an aluminum foil shell using a large cooking bowl as a mold, duct taped it to an antenna, and pointed it in the general direction of my laptop. That seemed to kick the signal up a few notches.)

urahonky

Frem wrote: »

I've read that turning the router signal up too much can drown out the signals your laptop is using to reply.

(Personally, I just made an aluminum foil shell using a large cooking bowl as a mold, duct taped it to an antenna, and pointed it in the general direction of my laptop. That seemed to kick the signal up a few notches.)

I think I am willing to do this.

GrimReaper

urahonky wrote: »

Frem wrote: »

I've read that turning the router signal up too much can drown out the signals your laptop is using to reply.

(Personally, I just made an aluminum foil shell using a large cooking bowl as a mold, duct taped it to an antenna, and pointed it in the general direction of my laptop. That seemed to kick the signal up a few notches.)

I think I am willing to do this.

Getting the antenna in a pringles can and pointing the pringles can in the direction of your laptop will be equally as effective too.

I'd also like to add that regardless of how much money you spend on wireless it's not always totally reliable. (seriously, i've spent some serious cash and time on wireless networks at work)

urahonky

Yeah. I know... Unfortunately for me our cable modem is in the basement, and my computer is on the 2nd floor on the polar opposite of the house.

Is there a quick guide on bridging wireless signals? Like if I buy another router and set it up as an access point? Is that possible?

Dixon

Yeah you can do that, I use a router as a bridge point, something else you can do is to use the electrical line adapters which transmit your network signal a long your power lines, you just have to make sure the two points are on the same line :P

I've currently just moved up to the N-draft gear as my new laptop has an N receiver. I was pleasantly surprised with the difference. The range is quite a bit better (From basement to neighbors house!) and I no longer get the lag spikes I was getting in Diablo 2.

urahonky

So I went ahead and bought a WAP54G for a wireless access point. Set it up as a Wireless Repeater. Used the MAC address for my Wireless router. I could NOT get the thing to talk to my router.

I figured it was DD-WRT (this was after an hour of dicking around with it). So I found a way to flash back to the standard Linksys firmware. And did that. I got my router up and running but now the damnedest thing happened: Every time I turn on my WAP54G, my router will immediately take a shit and disconnect from the internet and even prevents connections going into it.

5 seconds after unplugging the WAP, the router connects and surfs fine. Sigh... Now, 3 hours later, I'm fed up and need to study for my exam tomorrow. But does anyone have any ideas what I'm doing wrong here? I followed the FAQs from Linksys and got the same thing.