The DijonStock Digital Home Recording Support Forum

There's lots of techies here. I'm running a D-Link DIR 615 wireless router. Have had it a while. Notice it's less effective in some parts of the house than others. Some rooms on the other side of the house barely get 2 bars signal. Also, I think it's rather slow with all the computers, tablets and smartphones connected.

Any thoughts as to a better router that handles the traffic and speed for all of today's gadgets? Let me know what you recommend.

Thanks

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GSMUSIC: Hey RZ, Im not no upper class american, the gear I own is what I have special to me. My car sucks, my house sucks, my nieghborhood sucks. Does yours RZ? Does it?

rz-land

Wifi signal strength varies from brand to brand and type to type. Antenna placement has an influence. The size of your house is something to take into consideration. And the thickness of the walls.

The signal has to be strong enough in every place of the house, but you also have to realize that both router and device are both senders and receivers. So, the router also has to be sensitive enough to see your devices.

You can see if it's feasable to place the router somewhere in the middle of the house. Or you could install a second wireless router. I believe there are also repeaters but I don't have any practical experience with them, my gut feeling says stability might be an issue.

I have used a Linksys for quite some time and it worked well. Then I changed internet access service and got a model with built-in router with wifi that also works well.

The first thing I would do in your situation is experimenting with the antenna position.

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Don't judge the coffee by its cup.
The proof of the cheese is in the eating

Yes Robbie, I've done most things. The one thing I don't want to do is move the router from it's current position. The cable outlet for internet was put against the wall on one side of the house. I even went so far as to adjust the antenna and even got a sheet of aluminum that I curved and placed behind the router. As it is the router is sitting about 7 feet off the ground on a shelve. Not sure there's much else to do short of trying one that is more powerful.

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GSMUSIC: Hey RZ, Im not no upper class american, the gear I own is what I have special to me. My car sucks, my house sucks, my nieghborhood sucks. Does yours RZ? Does it?

rz-land

I should have known you already tried that

Let's wait for the techies like Dirk and Byron who have more sensible things to say.




You could also buy a smaller house

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Don't judge the coffee by its cup.
The proof of the cheese is in the eating

Are your walls lathe and plaster or the newer sheet rock type?

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it's funny, the older you get, the older you wanna be

Will a wifi repeater help?

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/35785-43-difference-wifi-booster-wifi-repeater


Never used one, just new they were around...

-= Beer

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I LOVE THIS!!! Ted Stevens, 82-year-old US Senator from Alaska and chairman of the Senate Committee on Science, Commerce and Transportation, for explaining in a speech how the Internet actually works: “It’s a series of tubes.”

Didn't know I had a techie reputation !!!- I've become a self taught audio guy re, compression eq etc, but when it come to hardware - not much help from me. I have a router like Ron's and it works pretty well in my house, which is a rambling floorplan.

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Byron

Well Byron, after my theoretic blah blah that doesn't really help anyone (with a few exeptions maybe), you often take issues to a more hands-on and useful level.

In my world, that's a techie!

Dirk does that too, and a few others, and sometimes it leads to valuable (to me) discussions on the discrepancy between theory and practice. I'm grateful that the people on this board complement each other so well. It's easy to see that if a newbie signs in with a problem, most of the times there's a solution, one way or another.

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Don't judge the coffee by its cup.
The proof of the cheese is in the eating

Hi ron. Let's see if we can help here.

I'll check which specs your router has later on. It may be a good idea to download insider and start that up on a laptop if you have one. It will allow you to measure the signals and more importantly to see on which channel your router has been set and if your neighbour on the far side of the house is not transmiting on the same channel. If that is the case the first thing you should do is switch channels. If you are on an bg router in the 2.4 GHz ( i'll check later ) you have channel 1, 6 or 11 to choose from. The other channels work in groups. So not available. More recent model may be in the 5 GHz range and have 40 channels to choose from. Mostly routers are set to factory standards and interfere with each other. A two bar signal is not neccesarily slow. Interference will eat you throughput. If you are on an inbetween channel and you have a neighbour in overlapping freq you will lose more bandwidth than when you are on exactly the same. A screen shot from insider on the spots where you have problems will tell us a lot. Let's start from there. If you have neighbour interference it should show.

Question : do you have an alarm with motions sensors ? They are notoriuos for creating interference in the 2.4 band as are wireless ip camera's. Is your problem constant or depending on time of day ?

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In a minute it might be gone. Life is a bear in a bubble.

http://www.soundclick.com/bearinabubble

I did a check for the strongest signal, which was channel 1 and it's now set for that. I've considered a repeater or stronger antenna, but my concern is I'd be throwing good money to bad. Sometimes, my phone will just show no wifi and just display 3G. It seems this unit I have has a narrow bandwidth and with too much going on, it bogs down. Keep in mind, at any given time, we have 3 desktops, two laptops, two tablets and two smartphones going. We work from here so there's a lot going on. These newer units have faster speed and bandwidth. Here's the one I'm considering: ASUS

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GSMUSIC: Hey RZ, Im not no upper class american, the gear I own is what I have special to me. My car sucks, my house sucks, my nieghborhood sucks. Does yours RZ? Does it?

rz-land

OK so it is a 2.4 GHz bgn device. Not much advanced settings as is to be expected with D-Link. Good news is it is supported by DD-WRT which is a alternative firmware with very powerfull settings but there is a steep learning curve to take if you want to use that. Should be considered before spending money. Example my router (W54Grt Linksys) allows a maximum power setting of 100mW. With DD-WRT it goes all the way up to 250mW.

But before digging into that. Are the rooms on the same level ? If you move through a wall at 90 degrees angle it is only 15cm thick but under an angle of 45 degrees it is almost six times as wide from the router point of view.

I'll tell you about antenna's later. I have something that takes priority for a couple of hours.

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In a minute it might be gone. Life is a bear in a bubble.

http://www.soundclick.com/bearinabubble

They may also have a shorter range in spite of what sales talk will tell you. I'll be back later. Got to go.

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In a minute it might be gone. Life is a bear in a bubble.

http://www.soundclick.com/bearinabubble

I need to check the detailed specs on the ASUS to give you thourough advice. A couple of things that i can see right away is the ability to use 5GHz. you will defenitelly find a ferq that is free. While it will penetrate easier the range is shorter due to the shorter wavelength. Three antennas give away that it uses MIMO technology which means the following. Ordinary bgn used a system called diversity with two antennas for cases in which the signal would reflect upon itself and because of phase miroring would anihilate it's own signal. Mimo uses these reflections and shifts the fase in such a way that the signal arrives perfectly aligned in spots where the old system signal would be dead. If you have a lot of reflection in your house (metal mostly) it will defenitely work better. A more powerfull processor will probably give you more througput as well but i hear these devices can run pretty hot so keep that in mind too.

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In a minute it might be gone. Life is a bear in a bubble.

http://www.soundclick.com/bearinabubble

Now, Dirk deserves the handle of a techie.

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Byron

Absolutely!

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Don't judge the coffee by its cup.
The proof of the cheese is in the eating

Hi,
I am using a repeater without any problems. So I have wifi outside the house and in my basement studio.

Oh and with wps it was configured with in 3 minutes.
Andreas

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Blues aint nothing but the blues!

Hi Ron.

Hows the wifi ? If you want you can download inssider from metageek here. As i said A screenshot form that program will tell us a lot about you wifi environment.

If i can help out just let me know. If you don't want any of this to go public you can pm me.

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In a minute it might be gone. Life is a bear in a bubble.

http://www.soundclick.com/bearinabubble