Need help with my Router

pschu75 · March 30, 2006

Any experts out there?

I'm hoping someone can offer some help. I bought a new lap top and router about 9 months ago. My friend installed the router for me and it worked great for about 3 months. Now the signal strength has dropped considerbly and I can only use the lap top in a few spots as opposed to my entire house during the first couple of months.

Does anyone have any thoughts?

Thanks in advance

Pete

Gxgolfer · March 30, 2006

This is a wireless question really. Have you installed anything lately that would interfere with the signal? Lamps, microwaves, etc???? Your unit could also just be going bad. Try moving the wireless router to a higher location, nothing obstructing it. and then try again. Also make sure the attennas are securely screwed in to the router...

Bigtee · March 30, 2006

What is the make and model? I have one and had to reconfigure it to my computer . Check your manual that came with it and phone the customer support line. They helped me set mine up and has worked great ever since.

pargolfer · March 30, 2006

See if you can do a hard reset of the router, it might just clear up the problems.

wahoo · March 30, 2006

Another thing to consider is cordless phone interference. Wireless routers use the same frequencies as common cordless phones, and this can cause problems. Have you added/moved a cordless phone since the signal strength has dropped?

You can buy a repeater that will "resend" your wireless signal throughout the area, or a high gain antenna that will actuall boost the signal to and from the router itself.

Wireless is great when it works, but can be a bear to figure out when it's not working.

pschu75 · March 31, 2006

Thanks for all the suggestions, looks like I've got some tinkering to do this weekend

Pete

Placebo · March 31, 2006

You might want to try asking this question in a tech forum like this one: http://www.tek-tips.com

You will need to create an account, but there are a lot of good experts their willing to offer advice.

Hope that helps!

johnburkejr · March 31, 2006

try switching teh channel and mode. IE: switch to g only channel 1 or b only channel 8 or whatever. there is probably interference with one of yoru neighbors or somehting in your house. there are tools out there to diagnose the problem (kinda). you may have too much security set up too which is taking bandwidth to negoiate.

i do this for a living, technology consulting, so i have seen many causes of this. feel free to pm me if you can't get it back to normal.

cheers!

allsouthpaw08 · April 1, 2006

this has happened to me many times, the problem always seemed to be that in some parts of my house i had a negative connection (you want a positive) but have your local internet provider come check it out, and see what they can do for ya.... hope this helps

peteman29 · April 4, 2006

try switching teh channel and mode. IE: switch to g only channel 1 or b only channel 8 or whatever. there is probably interference with one of yoru neighbors or somehting in your house. there are tools out there to diagnose the problem (kinda). you may have too much security set up too which is taking bandwidth to negoiate.

i do this for a living, technology consulting, so i have seen many causes of this. feel free to pm me if you can't get it back to normal.

cheers!

This is what I was going to say. If it's a Netgear router they are notoriously bad for interferance with other wireless routers. Just make sure you don't have the router set on the floor or on a thick wooden table or desk (these can affect strength)

Try switching channels in the router setup (you will need to directly connect the router to your PC via ethernet or usb). You just enter the ip address of the router into IE and change the channel. Most wiresless routers are 12 channel and are defaulted to channel 6 (half way) so try channel 1 first and if that is no better try channel 12. In the end you may just need to move the router somehwere else in the house.