If my computer is upstairs with a wireless router how do I connect the router to go downstairs where I get?

Question

better reception. Using my laptop downstairs only has 2 bars instead of 5. If I bring my laptop upstairs I get 5 bars. So what is the best way to have the router closer to me downstairs without having a cable running throughout the house?

Answer 1

So there are a few things you'll need to try, but keep in mind that worst case, you might need to do some internal wiring to move your wireless router or add another one.

First, don't let anyone sell you on high gain antennas because this might actually make your situation worse. The standard antenna will have a signal radiation pattern shaped pretty much like a donut with the wireless router in the center and most of the signal going out horizontally and just a little bit of the signal going straight up or down. A high gain antenna flattens this out, more like a pancake, with more signal going out a farther distance (at the level of the router) but now even less signal in the vertical direction.

Make sure your wireless router is in a good location in your upstairs room, not right next to a metal filing cabinet, or right next to the PC chassis for example. Someplace out in the open if possible. Indoors there is usually a lot of multipath interference, so sometimes just moving it a few feet in one direction or the other can help make a difference, because of reflections off ductwork inside the walls for instance. If your antennas are adjustable, make sure you keep them both pointing in the same direction, and don't go by the marketing pictures where they both point in opposite 45-degree directions to look pretty, that doesn't help. They should both be pointing straight up in general, because wireless LAN equipment uses vertical polarization. As an experiment, you could point them straight out (flat) and see if the signal improves downstairs or not.

Also make sure there are no sources of interference close by, such as 2.4GHz cordless telephones. In fact this is why I upgraded my cordless phones from 2.4 to 5.8GHz. Make sure you're not using BlueTooth equipment within a couple feet of the wireless router. It's also possible that a close-by neighbor is running on the same wireless channel as you causing cochannel interference. On your router, try selecting between wireless channels 1, 6 and 11 in turn (the laptop will pick up on the channel change automatically) to see which works best, you might get a better signal downstairs at one frequency or another. Go ahead and walk around the house and see how many bars you get in each room.

If still no luck, you have a couple options. One is to buy a wireless range extender. You could place it on the middle floor for example, it will pick up the wireless signal from the router upstairs and repeat it out giving a stronger signal downstairs. Problem with this solution is that a wireless repeater will cut your performance by about 50% because of the way the wireless protocols work. You may or may not notice this performance hit based on what you're doing over the network.

Other option is to run a cat5 wire between the floors, and hook up a second wireless router or access point. This is probably the ideal solution but with the headache of snaking a wire between the floors. If you can run a wire down one floor, to the middle level, then just put your single wireless router on that middle floor and you should then have 3 or 4 bars on both the upstairs and downstairs floors.

Answer 2

If u have a wireless router u can get another terminal n leave it "upstairs" n use another one with ur pc downstairs.

Answer 3

If you're using the 802.11b protocol and you have a 2.4 GHz phone in your house, these may interfere because they are using similar frequencies.

If this is the case:
1) Make sure that your phone and phone base are far from your wireless devices;
2) Consider changing protocol (802.11g for example).

Answer 4

As far as I know Linksys and also Netgear has come up with Wireless Access Points which take network signal wirelessly and provide it to computers wirelessly. Check out for those.

Answer 5

try changing the frequency on the router. you should not have problems down stairs.