Help with wireless router coverage

[DarkCyber]

Ok, I have not used any wireless networking stuff and trying to help my sister in law get this working better and get a good coverage out of this router: Belkin 802.11g Wireless DSL/Cable Gateway Router.

Here's the problem, her internet connection comes into her house on the second story and the router is located on the second story level. The router has two antennas on it and I left one straight up to cover the upstairs and tilted the other one at an angle so it would cover downstairs. The room where the pc is downstairs is one room over for where the router is, but I'm only able to get about 55% signal. She's having some problems getting the downstairs pc to surf because of the weak signal.

Shouldn't these routers get better coverage than this? Because real distance wise we're the downstairs pc is probably less than 15 feet away and is only going through the floor upstairs and one sheetrock wall downstairs.

I'm looking for suggestions on how to make the coverage better for upstairs and downstairs. I've noticed that Linksys make an antenna booster kit...which consist of bigger higher gain antennas that replaces the factory antennas.

SUGGESTIONS/HELP Please!

 

[irrision]

What kind of construction is the building? Is there anything metal between the router antenna and the computer downstairs? How about possible metal ductwork going through the floors? The table/desk it's sitting on? Nothing kills a wifi signal like a nice piece of sheet metal or a mid tower case sitting below it. Also try more antenna angles. Your other problem is that the router probably uses the antennas in diversity mode where it uses whichever "works better" signal-wise for the router. What this means is that at any given time the router might not even be listening on that one antenna you have angled down but rather the other antenna.

And finally you're using a belkin router which likely has a cheeseball radio in it with crummy antennas so it probably won't do very well with range, not to mention G series routers tend not to do as well for reasons I don't fully know.You could also try forcing the router to run in just 802.11b mode, I've found that you can squeeze it bit more range in b than g at the expense of speed (But with internet sharing it's not like you're going to notice so long as it manages 2mbps). I have to admit that nothing beats the out 4 port 802.11b Linksys routers for range and cheapness (At least they easily outreach every home wifi router I've gone through, just wish they have more features and better firmware).