New Wireless card signal range???????

[seanywal]

Hi, I have recently bought a new wireless card for my laptop. The box says that I should be able to get signal from anywhere in my house from the router downstairs.

For some reason this isnt the case it only seems to work when in the same room as the router. this sort of defeats the purpose i'm sure you can agree.

When taken into a different room the laptop continues to say signal strengh fine and that I knows the router is there, but it just wont connect to the web. I know a laymans amount about computers and I have no idea what to do. Please HELP!!!

Thanks

[ACtheTROLL]

ha! ha! ha! ha! lol! he! he!

sorry .... it's just I love wireless so much - we'd go bankrupt if wireless was 10% as good as it's supposed to be

802.11 has a theoretical range of approx 100M - but in practice it's generally much less.
and kit from different manufacturers tends to work less well together

it all depends on your house .... and where the kit is sited.
Think of the signal as a sphere
in real terms this means that the router should be high (bedroom or attic) BUT .....
walls, microwaves, metal, wireless keyboard\mouse,
neighbours' routers etc etc etc will all adversly affect signal strength also.

try moving the router round the room

the best method is cat5 wire (10, 100, 1000 Mb/s)
recently powerline (aka homeplug) adapters (up to 200 Mb/s
knocks WiFi (max 54Mb/s -> 1.25Mb/s)

[Ethel]

Very cynical, Ac.

I am no techie expert but my three year old router provides excellent range - all over my house, from the summer house at the bottom of my garden and from my next door neighbours' - if I take my laptop there.


Seanywal - are you sure the card you have bought is compatible with your router - both b or g, for example?

[ACtheTROLL]

Ethel - cynical moi - you'll be saying je suis pretentious next ;-)

I doubt that it's a compatibility issue if it works at close range. Possibly the area is saturated .... check the ssid,
try working your way through the chanels. Temporarily kill any security (not for too long)

If still no joy d/l
http://www.netstumbler.com/downloads/

see what that will pick up .... you are looking for other networks as well as your own


ps I have fairies at the bottom of my garden .... and if they log on to my router there'll be trouble