Which methods help to improve wireless signal?

Which methods help to improve wireless signal? My router is in my family room, and there's not much I can do to move it, it's in the corner of the house. My room and computer is upstairs and I only get a signal strength of about 17 percent while the one down the hall gets 65 percent.
Asked by: Guest \| Views: 202

Total answers/comments: 5

Comments display order:

Guest [Entry]

"You could boost your signal. Typically the power is set at 28 milli watt(mW). In order to boost signal you will have to install 3rd party firmware. I have had 3rd party firmware on my router for years and have boosted my signal to 200 mW with out any problems. It should be noted that with increased power comes higer temeretures that may negativily impact the lifetime of other components in the router. I have just started using dd-wrt as a firmware provider and they seem to do the job nicely - and it's free.
http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv3/index.php"

Guest [Entry]

"I recommend getting either one of three things:

wireless N base station - N has a better base range
wireless range extender - I have one of these and it works quite well.
a second router with DD-WRT and set up WDS"

Guest [Entry]

"Brick walls indeed do bad to signal penetration. The more dense the wall, the more it blocks 2.4G frequencies. Steel-reinforced concrete is obviously the worst, because steel mesh is very good at blocking electromagnetic radiation.

Installing more access points, using directional antennas and scanning for good channels helps. I use Android app called Wifi Analyzer to see what channels are occupied by neighboring networks. Using 802.11a and 5GHz frequency helps with other traffic, but penetrates walls worse."

Guest [Entry]

"Well, Linksys cards aren't the best either. Orinocco is pretty good, I hear.
Anyway, I'd say the two ways to improve your signal would be putting a more powerful antenna on the router or putting a more powerful antenna on your wireless card (and/or get a better card, like you were thinking about).
Disclaimer: I've read about wireless stuff, but all I have is a crappy Broadcom b/g mini-card in my Dell notebook. Other answers may be better."

Guest [Entry]

"If you look through the advanced wireless setting option in the dd-wrt firmware there is an option of increasing the transmission strength.

Wireless -> Advanced Settings -> TX Power

Don't set the value to high because it will cause the router to overheat and probably get fried in case of improper ventilation.

You could try switching channels, I have had luck with that."