MetaChat - oh noes slo internets

MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.

15 September 2007

oh noes slo internets AskMecha: My basement tenant's wifi reception is piss poor. →[More:] Here are the boring details: The router is in my 2nd floor office. I think it is a pretty good quality one, it was $60 (d-link.) My basement tenant has a little linksys dinky usb wireless receiver on her desktop. My boyfriend has a desktop with a wireless card on the same floor as the office, and he gets internet okay. I get wireless okay all over the rest of the house (including the basement) with my laptop. I was thinking of doing the following:

1.Tell her to get a wireless card installed.
2. Buy a booster for the basement.
3. Upgrade my internet speed (need to do that anyway.)

I don't *really* know what I'm doing. Are these steps going to help? Hinder? Any suggestions or corrections?

Thanks from clueless person with too much reliance on technology that she does not understand.

post by: typewriter at: 09:16 | 9 comments

Is the signal going through solid bricks/concrete/cinderblocks?

posted by chuckdarwin 15 September | 09:21

I assume so. It's an old house. 2 floors away. I'm in the basement now, and I can get full signal standing directing under where the router is. But that might be my laptop's receiver? and not relevant to my tenant's?

posted by typewriter 15 September | 09:23

Nope, it's probably some wall that the signal can't get through. Get a booster.

posted by chuckdarwin 15 September | 09:26

Okay, thanks!

posted by typewriter 15 September | 09:30

Actually, the internets here in SLO are pretty fast, especially considering my only current option is Cabal Internets from Charter.

posted by wendell 15 September | 15:07

Different WiFi manufacturers make different quality products. In my Thinkpad, I swapped the Intel-based card for an Atheros-based card, and picked up prolly 30% signal improvement. So yes, hardware variablity is a factor. More importantly, some of those USB-WiFi adapters are quite lousy; encouraging your tenant to get non-miserable hardware is a fine place to start.

Also keep in mind that common WiFi antennas are "polarized", meaning that they radiate signal most strongly in a plane perpendicular to the long axis. If you imagine a huge tangerine-shaped cloud in space, with the antenna in the middle where the white pithy strings of a tangerine are, you'll have a mental image. If the signal is marginally acceptable, you might fiddle with the orientation of the antenna to see if that helps just enough.

Lastly, WiFi is at a frequency that is intercepted by brick, cement, and water (vegetation) So being in the basement is like being in a cube with 5 opaque sides and 1 permeable side, which makes for lousy signal.

My fix would be to run a long ethernet cable down and hang another cheap Access Point off of it. And your option 3 is wholly independent of your WiFi signal, so that won't fix the signal quality, but you knew that.

posted by Triode 15 September | 15:29

Remember that signal attenuation is a function of the actual distance traveled through walls or floors, which if the signal has a diagonal path through the obstruction might be several times more than the actual width of the wall/floor. IOW: try to get the line from router to wifi card to be at right angles to said walls/floors.

posted by signal 15 September | 17:47

I have one of those USB wireless receivers (D-Link) and have found that it is very poor at getting a signal - my notebook gets about twice the signal or better in the same location. Try a "proper" wireless card if you can't get a cable down there. Perhaps buy one from a store with a liberal returns policy in case it doesn't work?

posted by dg 16 September | 17:20

Thanks!

Wendell: hee

posted by typewriter 19 September | 11:03

← Freddie is like, wtf || You know that Miss Teen South Carolina lesson on geography? →

HOME || REGISTER || LOGIN