WiFi Signal is too weak

So recently switched broadband provider and am relatively pleased with everything but the signal is weak in areas like the garden or even upstairs. Surely is shouldnt be so slow that I can't stream YouTube in HD in the loft especially when the speed promised should be much faster?

Anyways was wondering if any of you guys could give advice and experiences. I'm thinking of getting a new modem router but not sure how this would exactly work.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 1

mfaxford

1

There are two speeds you need to consider.

The first is the speed at which the router connects to the ISP over the phone line. This shouldn't change much and is the speed the ISP will have quoted as up to xx Mbps.

The second speed is the connection from your laptop (or other device) to the router using wifi or an ethernet cable. With a cabled connection it would normally be 100 Mbps or 1000 Mbps (also described as 1Gbps). For wifi the speed will vary depending on the wireless signal quality. The wireless signal quality will be affected by lots of things including parts of the building. Use of Microwave ovens, use of cordless land line phones as they all work in the same frequency range.

To improve the wifi signal is some areas there are a couple of things you can try. The cheapest option would be to move the router to somewhere more central. If there are still some areas not covered look at getting to Wireless Access Points and put them in areas with poor coverage and connect them back to the main router with an ethernet cable. With wireless Access Points (rather than routers) you'll be able to have them use the same wireless network name and password as the main router and you should easily roam from one to another. (If you got Wireless routers instead they create their own network so they need differing names so the device knows it's moved to a new network).

Reply 2

Binary Freak

18

Original post by mfaxford

There are two speeds you need to consider.

The first is the speed at which the router connects to the ISP over the phone line. This shouldn't change much and is the speed the ISP will have quoted as up to xx Mbps.

The second speed is the connection from your laptop (or other device) to the router using wifi or an ethernet cable. With a cabled connection it would normally be 100 Mbps or 1000 Mbps (also described as 1Gbps). For wifi the speed will vary depending on the wireless signal quality. The wireless signal quality will be affected by lots of things including parts of the building. Use of Microwave ovens, use of cordless land line phones as they all work in the same frequency range.

To improve the wifi signal is some areas there are a couple of things you can try. The cheapest option would be to move the router to somewhere more central. If there are still some areas not covered look at getting to Wireless Access Points and put them in areas with poor coverage and connect them back to the main router with an ethernet cable. With wireless Access Points (rather than routers) you'll be able to have them use the same wireless network name and password as the main router and you should easily roam from one to another. (If you got Wireless routers instead they create their own network so they need differing names so the device knows it's moved to a new network).

Brilliant advice, but it'd be ideal if you quoted him so he's able to read it ASAP. :tongue:

Original post by Pulse.

So recently switched broadband provider and am relatively pleased with everything but the signal is weak in areas like the garden or even upstairs. Surely is shouldnt be so slow that I can't stream YouTube in HD in the loft especially when the speed promised should be much faster?

Anyways was wondering if any of you guys could give advice and experiences. I'm thinking of getting a new modem router but not sure how this would exactly work.

Posted from TSR Mobile

In addition to the advice that mxfaxford provided, you could also try switching to the least congested channel if the issue persists. :smile:

Reply 3

jonnyh1994

1

Not too mention there is actually a difference with Mb/s and MB/s. I believe 1Mb is an 1/8 of a MB. I used to think they meant the same thing but sounded differently and ended up complaining to my ISP about not getting 5MB/s downloads! I hate how they don't say how fast your internet is in MB...feels like a con but I'm sure there's probably a proper reason to why they do this other than to trick people

Reply 4

Mad Vlad

19

Original post by jonnyh1994

Not too mention there is actually a difference with Mb/s and MB/s. I believe 1Mb is an 1/8 of a MB. I used to think they meant the same thing but sounded differently and ended up complaining to my ISP about not getting 5MB/s downloads! I hate how they don't say how fast your internet is in MB...feels like a con but I'm sure there's probably a proper reason to why they do this other than to trick people

Because data rates in communications are always measured in bits per second, not Bytes. Just a convention. A convenient side effect of this is the marketing benefit of being able to quote a number that's 8 times larger than if you used Bytes per second, which of course is the base transfer rate measure in most operating systems.

Reply 5

Pulse.

OP

18

Thanks guys; repped all of you.

Posted from TSR Mobile

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 6

mfaxford

1

Original post by jonnyh1994

Not too mention there is actually a difference with Mb/s and MB/s. I believe 1Mb is an 1/8 of a MB. I used to think they meant the same thing but sounded differently and ended up complaining to my ISP about not getting 5MB/s downloads! I hate how they don't say how fast your internet is in MB...feels like a con but I'm sure there's probably a proper reason to why they do this other than to trick people

As Mad Vlad said it's because Communications stuff generally works in bits per second rather than bytes. This may come from older serial links where speeds were generally measures in Baud or symbols per second and you may not have send 8 bits for a byte e.g. old Teletype printers using Baudot only send 5 bits of character data but there was also other signalling information as well (start and stop bits).

When you get into Computers in depth you'll find a whole load of other confusing sets of numbers. Disk Drive manufacturers generally work in Base 10 so your drive 1 TB drive has 1,000,000,000,000 bytes on it but operating systems generally work in Base 2 so you only see 931GiBytes.

Reply 7

Iqbal007

19

Original post by Pulse.

So recently switched broadband provider and am relatively pleased with everything but the signal is weak in areas like the garden or even upstairs. Surely is shouldnt be so slow that I can't stream YouTube in HD in the loft especially when the speed promised should be much faster?

Anyways was wondering if any of you guys could give advice and experiences. I'm thinking of getting a new modem router but not sure how this would exactly work.

Posted from TSR Mobile

If you connect directly you'll get some top speed, the issue is the routers wifi capabilities, which can be affected by its effective range and the thickness of your houses walls/ceilings.

So consider placing the router in a more central position, alternatively use powerline adaptors to increase the wifi range, by using a wireless extender, or setting up a second router via the powerline system.

WiFi Signal is too weak

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