Boosting bad WiFi reception

D

DirtyApe

Gawd
Joined
Nov 6, 2003
Messages
860
I'm trying to find a way to boost my friend's wireless signal so I can use it across the house. He's using a motorola modem that has wireless built-in. I've heard rumors that these devices generally aren't that great. Would I need to setup a signal booster between myself and the router/modem or should I just buy a wireless card instead of using my laptop's built-in wireless card. I know someone is going to say to just move closer but I'd prefer not to because then I'd have to deal with screaming kids, loud TV, and lack of privacy while gaming or watching movies on my laptop. I don't really have a price range but nothing crazy. Just looking for a simple solution (besides moving closer -.-).
 
If there's a spot about halfway that you can place a device, buy a dd-wrt compatible router and set it up in wireless repeater mode. You'll halve the available wireless bandwidth, but if you can live with that it should solve your range problem as long as the repeater gets good signal to both your client and his modem.
 
Is there a way that I can just buy a wireless repeater instead of having to buy a router and mod it for that function? Or would buying a PC card wireless card make any difference? The main problem I'm having is that the wireless signal just drops out completely. I'll have a decent signal that sits around 3/5 or 4/5 bars when checking the signal strength. If I try to play a game and have ventrilo running at the same time its fine for a little while but then randomly drops the connection.
 
Your problem is the wireless sucks on the modem. You can certainly try a repeater but I've never had good luck with them. You could also just buy a decent N-router and sit that behind the DSL modem, should increase your range quite a bit.
 
yeah what captain colonoscopy said. i hate doing antyhing but surfing the web on wireless connections. signals can drop even with good routers.
 
Wireless Router with DD-WRT or other 3rd party firmware as repeater (it is pretty easy to setup and works well).
OR put a better Wireless Router next to the current one.
 
well the problem with connecting a router to the modem is that the modem has wireless and firmware built into it. i dont know how to bypass that firmware or how to "turn it off" so that it just acts like a regular modem. my friend is paranoid about truing to do that because he might not be able to make the wireless work again.
 
You wouldn't have to turn the wireless off on the modem or mess with it in any way if you didn't want to. Just setup the router as an access point and plug the modem into one of the LAN ports on the router. Disable the DHCP server and set a different IP on the router and you'll be good to go.
 
The router that I have is Netgear WRT-something...its about 3 years old. I don't really know how to do what you just said to do. So what I'm basically doing with the router is turning it into a wireless switch instead of using it as a router for IP addresses. Hmm I'll have to see if my friend will let me try that out but he is kind of paranoid about letting mess with his stuff.
 
haffey said:
You could always just try a wok-tenna if you want to shoot the signal in one specific area only.

example
Click to expand...

Woktenna?!? LOL sweet.

Personally I'd plop down a better router next to the modem. Other then better wireless any decent router will function better as a gateway, dhcp server, etc then the crap the most ISP's hand out.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top