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Privateer570
new user
Reg'd: Fri
Posts: 7
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Hi all,
Well, are you sitting comfortably beacuse this is an odd one -
I have very recently arrived back in the UK and have set up with Tiscali for broadband coverage. They (eventually) provided a nice Siemens Gigaset wifi router. I had trouble initially setting it up but it all works fine now and I have my laptop (Toshiba Satellite Pro - couple of years old) and my PlayStation 3 working perfectly from it. Now the fun begins.
My desktop PC (XP home) is in possibly the furthest position from the router in my apartment and 'helpfully' is in a room that was created as an extension to the building a number of years ago which means that one of the walls is solid brick and stone two feet thick. Somewhat unsurprisingly, I get a weak signal from the Tiscali router on my laptop when in the room.
I have a D-Link USB dongle thing plugged into a USB port on the rear of the desktop's chasis and wasn't picking up anything. To boost the signal, I bought a Belkin Wireless Range extender and set it up to relay the Tiscali signal down towards the room. I was still getting a terribly weak intermittant signal. I concluded that this was due to two reasons 1) the D-link USB dongle was pretty lame and 2) the physical position of the extender was probably on the very edge of the effective range of the Tiscali router. I have now moved the Belkin router closer to the Tiscali one, and went and bought a PCI wifi card to replace the USB business in the desktop.
Here is the problem...
I can connect to my Belkin 'network' (which is relaying the Tiscali signal) on my laptop in the room with my desktop, and it connects at 54Mbps and the signal is strong and everything is great and wonderful. My desktop however can also connect to the Belkin network but despite the signal being 4 to 5 bars and 'good' the speed rarely if ever goes above 11Mbps and mostly stays around 2 to 5.5 Mbps... this is the same network as the laptop which is sat no more than 1 foot from it yet there is a horrific data dropout. What on earth can I do to rectify this?
Just to add insult to injury, every now and then my desktop disconnects from the wireless network (only to reconnect a few seconds later) but clearly interrupting my already slow connection...
I'm guessing there is more likely something wrong with my desktop than the router(s) but I really need help as this is making me crazy!!
All help is greatly appreciated
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putasolutions
regular
Reg'd: Tue
Posts: 12275
Loc: Infinity and beyond
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It suggests that your desktop wifi adaptor is an old 802.11b adaptor rather than the later 802.11g(n) that your laptop, but without knowing what adaptor have you got installed in the desktop, it is pure conjecture
Can you post which adaptor you have?
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"Only the stupid don't ask questions."
My piccies
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Privateer570
new user
Reg'd: Fri
Posts: 7
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Hmmmm,
I am probably going to sound a little stupid now, but I think I may have inadvertently solved this mystery with some very basic solutions.
Basically, the two main issues with my desktop come down to one actual problem. I had to move the Belkin extender into my hallway right outside my study doorway and just happened to glance at the desktop's monitor and saw the speed shoot up to 54Mbps!
I have now blu-tacked the thing to the wall in situ and am conducting experiments with it (and to be fair it does still fluctuate between 36Mbps and 54Mbps) but that appears now to depend on whether I am requesting any data from the net - when activly surfing it shoots up to 48 or 54 and when just looking through a particular page (or writing on a forum!) it throttles back to 24 or 36Mbps.
As the signal is 'that' strong compared to the old 1 or 2 Mbps I was getting, the thing has not cut itself off at all since I moved the extender - I am guessing that in the past the signal got so low that the desktop simply lost it all together and had to scan for it again.
The main problem in this situation which I completely didn't take into too much account is the physical makeup of this house. All the walls are thin except the walls to my study which as stated previously are at least a foot and a bit of solid bricks and motar. Effectively I have my very own Farrady Cage and simply moving the extender three feet from its original position so that it can send its signal "through the doorway" appears to have fixed this.
Of course, this still doesn't explain why my laptop could get full strength in the study all the time no matter where the extender was... but hey.
I'll let you all know if the situation changes...
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