Wireless Router Position???

[Conshine]

Hi there, new to this forum, so be gentle with me :)

I have had different opinions about where the best place to site my wireless router (Netgear DG834PN).

Some say upstairs and some say in the living room, so my question is really....

Is it better to have it upstairs away from the computers or down in the living room (where they are used 75% of the time) where it would be only about 2m away from the laptop? (does being too close to it matter)?

Thanks very much,

Ben

[wonderlust]

The normal opinion is to have it as high as possible.

But it is preferable to have it plugged into the master socket to acheive the best adsl speed.

you may wish to try it in various psoitions to see which gives the best Wifi to adsl balance

[nft99]

my netgear sits behind my monitor ;) but i only have 1 machine :D

welcome to the forum!

[Lynx]

Closest to the laptops, upstairs or downstairs it does not matter if you consider this little diagram:
http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/7614/31366015gg8.jpg

http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/9615/55352913lv3.jpg

Very simplified but you get the idea, they will both cover the house but closer to the red dot (router) the better.

[wonderlust]

You may find better gains by changing the channel your router is broadcasting on.

Not all channels are full channels, there is an overlap, only certain channels will give the full bandwidth.

It may also be worth doing a survey of other local wifi access points, many manufacturers ship using channel 6 so by switching to another channel you could imporve the performance with out moving the router

[Monkey]

You may find better gains by changing the channel your router is broadcasting on.

Not all channels are full channels, there is an overlap, only certain channels will give the full bandwidth.

It may also be worth doing a survey of other local wifi access points, many manufacturers ship using channel 6 so by switching to another channel you could imporve the performance with out moving the router
Very good point wonderlust.

I would advise using either channels 1 6 or 11 as these are the only channels that dont overlap.

And if you ask me 11 is your best bet.

But if you ask me i would use an ethernet, obviously depends on your setup

[alexnifty]

In my area everyone is using 1 6 and 11, theres 3 or 4 on each channel. In this situation surely its better to use something like 9?

[wonderlust]

Yes, having said that the alternative is by a 15Db aerial and blow all the neighbours away :twisted:

[Monkey]

In my area everyone is using 1 6 and 11, theres 3 or 4 on each channel. In this situation surely its better to use something like 9?
What channel you use doesnt interfere with your neighbours. Its the channel used to connect to your router. All other channels except for 1 6 and 11 overlap each other.

No matter what anyone else is using these 3 channels will always be the quickest ones

[M4T VW]

Mine is hidden under the stairs. Dont have a problem with signal at all:mrgreen:

[monkey56657]

1 at the cable modem
1 at the center of house (upstairs)
1 at far side of house.

5 bars signal everywhere. :mrgreen:
3 bars signal at the end of the road :mrgreen:

[Audigex]

My question is how much you use the NETWORK rather than the internet. When I'm using my LAN, I'm only ever actually using my broadband through it... therefore anything above a 2/3meg connection is wasted. So even one bar signal is more than sufficient.

Personally I'd place it right by the master phone socket, the range will be big enough to cover most houses anyway - I can use mine in several other houses in the street.

[monkey56657]

My 2 computers are synced every how (docs, music what not) and i often transfer a lot of stuff to my local server over network.

Anyway. A 54mbps wireless network never actually runs that high. Often you only get a data throughput of 75% of that. I have 20mb broadband as well so that is a sizy percentage.

On the downstairs (family) computer we don't get enough throughput for the 20mbps when it says connected @ 54 but its a s**t wireless card so not too bothered bout that one.

[mac124]

don't know how true it is but apparently wireless routers can lose alot of signal strength on the vertical plane so if the router is upstairs and the pc's used downstairs you might suffer a drop in signal strength even if you are only 10 feet away from the router, i.e in the rooom above the room with the router in.

I would have the router on the same floor as where the pc will be used the majority of the time, or better yet use wires ;).

[Lynx]

If its going to be used by a computer directly above, turn the router arial on its side and you will get far more signal :P

[monkey56657]

Each of my routers has 2 aerials positioned at 90c angles to each other.

[mac124]

yup angling the aerial / aerials may help i guess