Help on wireless connections!!!!!! =(

[jo2995]

Hi guys. I have horrible wireless connectivity in my house and have spent a lot on equipment to boost the signal, to no avail. Here's the rundown:

House:
-$800,000 with brick chimney, stone walls, no wired ethernet, no powerline capability
-Bad router placement in the office to one side of the house, impossible to move

Clients:
-Two computers with wired ethernet
-Two wireless-g laptops
-My wireless-g desktop all the way at the OTHER end of the house!! *trouble machine, even with Zonet PCI card adapter, 5db high-gain antenna, 7ft. Hawkings extension cable, homemade Windsurfer

Equipment:
-SBC DSL SpeedStream modem
-WRT54Gv6 with dual 7db high-gain antennas with two 10ft. extension cables, factory firmware, (I'm scared of bricking it with DD-WRT, novice?)
-Belkin wireless-g range extender placed in the center of the house, 5 bar signal from router

Symptons with my computer at the other end of the house, (the laptops are fine because they are closer):
-Continuous dropouts if I connect to the router's network, 1 bar, 18 mbps
-Unable to obtain IP address if I connect to the wireless extender, 4 bars, 54 mbps, 100% requests time out if manually configured

What I'm looking at:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833156226
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833164110

[jbennet]

tha top one has 12% poor or very poor reviews. I dont reccomend it

[jo2995]

Yeah, I noticed that recently too. The funny thing is that when it was first stocked, it got 100% five eggs from 9 reviewers. Sadly, that's Newegg's top rated 300N wireless router, but I don't need wireless-n until they finish up the draft. Thanks for bringing my attention to that. What about a Cisco router? Also, what materials would best reflect the antenna signals if I were to build a cantenna or parabolic reflector, besides tin foil?

[jbennet]

not too sure about tin foil etc..., not my area of expertise

but cisco and linksys are good brands (cisco own linksys, most of thier home stuff is under the linksys brand, large business routers are under the cisco brand)

[jo2995]

Hey, I just bought an 100 ft. ethernet cable for $20 after shipping and tax on eBay!! Whoppeee.... =) I returned the wireless range extender to Newegg, but lost $20 because of the price of restocking it, sending it back, and tax, even though shipping it to me was free. Oh well, I guess I learned my lesson. For the time being though, I built a Windsurfer using this template http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/index.html. It gets me one bar at 1 mbps. Hope the ethernet cable works!! =)

[jbennet]

100ft is the max i think, should work

[jo2995]

Thank you!!!! It works. Just a big ugly cable running through my house, I'll try to run it around the walls. =)

[jmm123]

Did you try troubleshooting the wireless extender issue. It seems as though it is not passing traffic back to the router. Are encryption settings accurate and can you ping the extender from the wired network?

[jo2995]

Yup Yup. 5 PCs chilling on a WRT54G. Everthing is fine now. I already returned the extender. =)