Netgear Confusion

[BWAndrew]

Hi,

I have recently installed a wireless network in my parents' house. The 'family desktop' unfortunately lives in an extension of the house and as such is a dreadful place for getting a signal (lots of external walls). There are two (soon to be three) other laptops in the house.

I bought a 'Netgear DG834GT SuperG 108 Mbps wireless ADSL router' which I initially tried wiring to the 'family desktop' and connected the laptops wirelessly with 'Netgear WG511T 108Mbps Wireless CardBus Adapters'. However, the signal reaching the laptops elsewhere in the house was expectedly bad. I therefore installed a wireless card in the 'family desktop' and positioned the router more centrally in the house.

I'm now in the position of having two happy laptops and one barely happy desktop, which fades in and out of existence with regards to the network. I cannot find anywhere to position my router/ADSL modem to provide reliable network coverage to all three computers.

Does anyone have any bright ideas? My first thought was to install a repeater but I am confused about compatibilities. I know that Netgear access points can be used to bridge between two other access points, but then I would need a total of three access points (one for the 'family desktop', one for the laptops and one for bridging between the two), which seems excessive.

The point of all this is: Are there any units on the market that can simply extend the signal from the wireless Netgear router into the dodgy area. It seems such a simple request but I've had no joy thus far.

I live in England, so Ethernet over power lines doesn't seem to be an option. The cheaper the solution the better, although we want to be completely wireless if at all possible - that is after all the whole point!

Many thanks,
Ben :confused:

[golfnut]

You could try using a wireless ethernet bridge. You probably won't be able to use Super G mode but because it connects to the ethernet port of the Desktop computer, you'll have more flexibility of placement to obtain a stronger signal.

Greg

[Planet]

BWAndrew, I beleive that router comes with a 2 dBi detachable antenna, you can try replacing that with a higher dBi radius antenna and see if that helps.

[ddodge1]

It sounds like you had a wired connection to the desktop before you had the wi-fi router. You can still have both wired and wireless in your home. I have the same problem at my house. A heavy brick wall runs in the center of the home and no wi-fi makes it through. (I can get a neighbors router but no my own at one location). Put the wi-fi router in the most used area for the laptops and wire up the desktop

[BWAndrew]

We didn't have a network before I tried this as my father has always been against wiring the house for some reason. As I said, the original plan was to wire the router to the PC, but to get the router out the dodgy room (such that it provides good connectivity for the laptops) I would need to go back to the whole long wires aspect that we were so keen to avoid!

The wireless ethernet bridge approach presumably has a simillar problem, namely that I would need to run a cable from the 'family desktop' to the bridge unit which would be situated somewhere with better signal?

Any thoughts about the 'WRE54G Wireless-G Range Expander' - does anyone know if this would work to get the signal into the dodgy room? In particular, presumably it is compatible with my router?

Thanks for the thoughts, I shall try a stronger antenna first.