Help with Wireless Network in New Home

[micbur]

Have recently moved to a new home and after such my wireless network signal strength is too low to connect 3 of the 5 PC I had at the old house. The bedrooms are now on the opposite side of the house.

The old network was configured as such:

Main PC was connected to internet using dialup modem (I am in the country...no cable or DSL yet available but I am looking into going with satalite soon!). Have wireless USB adapter connected to this PC. Have 3 other desktops all with wireless USB adapters and laptop with built-in wireless. All PC's are running XP and using home network wizard was able to wirelessly connect all to share the internet connection and for file/printer sharing.

Tried to have same setup at the new house but signal strength not strong enough for the 3 PC's on the other side of the house from the main PC. Can barely find the network.

What do I need to boost my signal to other PC's? Will wireless router connected to main PC help? What router will work with dial-up?

Thanks

[wirles]

You could use a 'dish' from Hawking Technology. It has some impressive specifications in terms of RX gain.

Hawking Technologies

[nKrypteD1]

Best idea is to buy a longer Ethernet Cable, move the Wireless Access Point towards the middle of the house where it has to traverse through the fewest walls in the house. Beyond that, most routers that home users have (linksys) have antenna/range extenders, these are just longer antennas that attach to the wap/router and boost the signal somewhat. Hope this helps somewhat.

[clock3687]

The easiest way by far is to do what nKrypted1 suggested. The hawking antenna works very well, too. If you just want a router that will cover your entire house, I would suggest the Netgear MIMO RangeMAX router. I use one personally and it covers all 4 floors of my house. You can find it for around $80-$100 at best buy or circuit city.

You said that you were going to get satellite soon...Verizon has EvDO (wireless broadband) available in your area. i would take a look at that along with satellite. Good luck.

[nKrypteD1]

Hands down, do the EV-DO over satellite, I've been down that road, you'll pay more for satellite, it'll be slower, and there will be even bigger issues vs. installing a cellular card and paying the monthly connection.

[wirles]

Originally Posted by nKrypteD1

Hands down, do the EV-DO over satellite, I've been down that road, you'll pay more for satellite, it'll be slower, and there will be even bigger issues vs. installing a cellular card and paying the monthly connection.

+1

Avoid Satellite for internet like the plague. To anyone who has had it before, all you have to say to bring back the pain is 'FAP Bucket.'

[nKrypteD1]

Originally Posted by wirles

+1

Avoid Satellite for internet like the plague. To anyone who has had it before, all you have to say to bring back the pain is 'FAP Bucket.'

Heh I've been FAP'd more times that I care to recall, for the record FAP stands for Fair Access Policy, HughesNet and Starband both have limits to how much you can download over set time, I upgraded to the business version of Hughesnet (Direcway at the time) to get up to 120Mb in 6 hours. I'd be willing to say that chances are that the amounts are a bit different now, but it's still a reality with satellite...

[Andy]

I used a Satellite internet connection a few months ago when I travelled into no-mans land and, albeit it being the ONLY option where I was, it was horrible and I could not stand it. I would rather have used my 1x DUN than this crap, lol.

[nKrypteD1]

Originally Posted by Andy

I used a Satellite internet connection a few months ago when I travelled into no-mans land and, albeit it being the ONLY option where I was, it was horrible and I could not stand it. I would rather have used my 1x DUN than this crap, lol.

Yeah the latency is usually up around 1 second, so even with throughput being there the latency makes it seem extremely slow.

[wirles]

Originally Posted by nKrypteD1

Yeah the latency is usually up around 1 second, so even with throughput being there the latency makes it seem extremely slow.

Then add in the IP NAT'ing and crazy VLAN's that happen at each gateway (terrestrial node, satellite routes, then end user) and you have no way of using a VPN in most cases.