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Extending a wireless signal.


Acid
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We've just moved into a new house, and the wireless router is downstairs in the front room. My mum has an office in the back upstairs, and next to that room is my bedroom.

 

Up there though the signal is terrible and my iMac keeps losing it and finds it hard to connect again.

 

In short, is there any way to extend the signal, a box we can buy, a bigger aerial we can stick on the router, something we can plug into the computers upstairs?

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so its a sky router then?

 

ok with a computer that has no connectivity issues open a web browser and in the address bar type '192.168.0.1' you should then get a username & password prompt. The deafult username for sky is 'admin' and the password is 'sky'. This shouls then log you into to the router settings.

 

Sky have had a fe different routers over time, but generally when logged in if you go to the setup menu, it should have a 'wireless option' Within that menu should be the wireless channel. Most routers have the options of channel 1-11. My advice is to change the channel and see what the resulting signal quality is. All Channels work on a slightly different frequency and can have a huge effect on the wireless performance & range of the router. The 3 most common channels to try are 1, 6 & 11. i.e at the bottom, middle & top of the range. I've seen it in the past where just by chaning from 4 to 5 can have a massive effect on the signal quality.

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It was set on automatic, so I stuck it on 11, out of 13, but not made much difference to be honest, loads one page, but then loses its signal and stops again.

 

Is there nothing I can buy to stick upstairs that will boost it?

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It was set on automatic, so I stuck it on 11, out of 13, but not made much difference to be honest, loads one page, but then loses its signal and stops again.

 

Is there nothing I can buy to stick upstairs that will boost it?

 

try 1 or 6.

 

If it still makes no differencethe you will probably need an access point. Sky don't allow for a replacement router. A cheap access point will extend the signal no probs and will only cost about £20-£25.

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It was set on automatic, so I stuck it on 11, out of 13, but not made much difference to be honest, loads one page, but then loses its signal and stops again.

 

Is there nothing I can buy to stick upstairs that will boost it?

 

Buy a repeater. Wireless repeater - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I personally use an Airport Express, but there are literally hundreds out there. Netgear, Linksys etc. etc.

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Airport Express is an Apple thing right? Will that work with my mums computer on the other side of the wall to my iMac?

 

Yes that is an Apple base station. Depends if the wall is made of lead for instance, it wont extend through the wall. However it will take a signal and extend it. But there are plenty of other, many cheaper aswell, options. Just that personally I use an Airport express to do this and it works well for me.

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Yes that is an Apple base station. Depends if the wall is made of lead for instance, it wont extend through the wall. However it will take a signal and extend it. But there are plenty of other, many cheaper aswell, options. Just that personally I use an Airport express to do this and it works well for me.

 

Its not lead, its just two layers of brick and a bit of plaster.

 

This thing?

AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes - Apple Store (UK)

 

I don't think she'll be convinced it's the best option at that price.

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Its not lead, its just two layers of brick and a bit of plaster.

 

This thing?

AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes - Apple Store (UK)

 

I don't think she'll be convinced it's the best option at that price.

 

Yup that is the one I use, however lots others out there. Amazon.co.uk: wireless repeater That is what Amazon has of products, looks like the cheapest ones can be gotten from 15 quid or so. But again, you can purchase them from almost any computer shop, currys or john lewis or similar.

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My stepdads been on the phone to sky for most of the day and he's told them he's paying for a wireless internet connection for his house, but he can't get one in certain parts of the house. They said there are ways we can sort it, but it's a sackable offence for their call centre people to give out that information. We can pick up 6 other networks, but the one we're paying for is at the bottom of the strength list.

 

So he went out and bought a new router for £120, but wants to try and sort this crap out with sky before sacking them off after 1 day.

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My stepdads been on the phone to sky for most of the day and he's told them he's paying for a wireless internet connection for his house, but he can't get one in certain parts of the house. They said there are ways we can sort it, but it's a sackable offence for their call centre people to give out that information. We can pick up 6 other networks, but the one we're paying for is at the bottom of the strength list.

 

So he went out and bought a new router for £120, but wants to try and sort this crap out with sky before sacking them off after 1 day.

 

You can buy a decent router from PC world say, and then connect it to the router that came from sky via an ethernet cable. You will then be able to use the new router that you bought as a wifi router and just stop the sky router from broadcasting wirelessly. It isn't perfect as it means you have to have 2 routers plugged in.

 

Alternatively you can have an extremely long ethernet cable I have in my house that I am not using that should stretch from your router to the room that your PC is in.

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Use the Airport Express to extend. Dead easy. And it has an audio socket in it, so you can plug speakers into it and direct music to it via iTunes. I had three of these buggers working in my house, and the signal was excellent everywhere, and being able to pipe music around was pretty slick too.

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