Wireless bridge vs Access Point?

[Justintoxicated]

So I think my Wireless Bridge is taking a crap, (well not for sure, it could be my router).

Heres the deal:

Landlord has Modem and my Wireless Router (netgear) in the living room.

I have My PC's in my bedroom. They are all plugged into a switch that is plugged into a bridge that connects to the router wirelessly. It keeps dropping the signal from the router constantly, while their Mac seems to stay connected fine.

I have tried hard resets includig holding the reset button with it unplugged for over 5 minutes. After 5 hours trying to get it to connect different channels etc I gave up at 3am, woke up the next morning and it was fine. Then the same thing happened last night, so I gave up after one hour, in the morning it was again, working fine. My internet does seem to be going kind of slow, but it hows a 90% signal!

So is the bridge failing? Any Recomendations on what to repalce it with? Can I somehow use a wireless access point conected to my switch instead?

In the meantime I'm using a netgear wireless USB dongle plugged into the PC, to connect to the router. it too constantly disconnects but it has a much weaker signal like 20-38%. I can get the dongle to reconnect usualy by restarting the router, and sometimes by unplugging the dongle and plugging it back in. (This is while the bridge will have no connection to the router for hours).

BTW the bridge will connect in ADHOC mode in about 5 seconds (Although this does me no good) but as I said it suddenly has some real serious issues connecting to my router in infrastructure mode.

 

[RoBo]

Anything interfering with the signal?
Might be a good time to upgrade.

 

[Justintoxicated]

Could be but it is hard to say, I thik it might just be dying since the USB card will connect ok, just a weaker signal than the bridge.

What bridge would you suggest upgrading to?

 

[RoBo]

Belkin [SIZE=-1]F5D7330 pretty good, school uses them.
[/SIZE]

 

[Justintoxicated]

Looks ok, just wish someone had a bridge faster than 54mps... Not that it is really any big deal, just that I seem to get alot of interfearance and weak signals with 802.11g Well even only 20 feet away I get lousy connections... I HATE NETGEAR NOW...

Dosent seem like much of an upgrade from what I have now?

Will this thing work ok if I use some P2P programs? Seems alot of wirelss craps out when I try to game through it or make alot of connections...I hate wireless actualy but don't have much choice right now.

This is what I have now that seems to keep crapping out.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Netgear-WGE101-...4348584QQihZ012QQcategoryZ67253QQcmdZViewItem

In fact that is the only place in the US I could even find using a google search...

I guess it just went bad one day?

I did a search on the netgear website and my search returns 0 results for this product and their tech phone support really sucks (Sorry that i 2 years old so no support). Do they really just deny that they ever made such a device? It's not like I'm trying to use something from the 70's here!

 

[Wang191]

if it's workin in the morning but not at night constantly it could be an interferance problem. Do they turn on the AC in the evening? I mean it could be anything...that's the fun part about RF. Maybe they use the cordless phone a lot at night. Check into it.

 

[Justintoxicated]

Well last night it went out again and it is STILL not connected as of now...I think the routher needs to be reset again too. Although the MAC is proabbyl still connected,

I used my USB drive this morning to check traffic before I left for work (Bridge still not working). But that has disconnected since as well.

What about the Linksys bridge? The Sys admin at my work says Belkin is complete crap/garbage. He says the Linksys with Linux Flash might be the way to go, but I'm thinking to change both the router and bridge at this point as I'm sick and tired of disconnecting all the time.

I was thinking to get Dual Band Wirless N Buffalo router $300 and a Belkin A/G/B Bridge.

Is Buffalo any good? Would I be beter off with their MIMO Router or Wirless N as far as signal strength and avoiding interfearance?

Basicaly looking at the last 3 on this comparison but not sure what to get. I really don't want to buy a $300 router if it is a waste. http://www.buffalotech.com/comparison-charts/wireless/wireless-ag-mimo-performance/

Hell is Buffalotech even any good?

I will of course start by replacing the bridge (which will not support new tech since none of them seem to)...Then replace the router to get a better signal.

As far as neighbors using wireless phone at 11-4 am I doubt it but theres nothing I could do about it if they did!

Shoudl I just go for this Solution I found in another post? "Best solution in my experience is to buy a WRT54g. Then flash it with DD-WRT. Then read on the DD-WRT site on how to configure it as a wireless bridge and do so. Bam! You have a link that works better than a WET54g."