I am having a problem with my WIFI connection at home. At the moment I am using usb wifi adapter (Netqear stick) but the signal is extremely poor and sometime the driver plays up.

I could buy a PCI-Express card for my computer but that costs £55 and won't neccesarily improve my reception.

But I was thinking about using a bridge device of some kind that I would connect to my pc through a LAN cable. I assume could buy a dedicated bridge, but I've read somewhere I can get and an old wifi router and use that in a bridge mode. I think old router would cost less than £10 on ebay and I think it would be more convenient than a PCIE card.
I could also move the bridge/router much closer to the actual main router and get a better reception.
Running LAN cables to the main router is not an option btw.

What do you guys think?

My boss has tried both (PCI and bridge) and neither brought any real benefit. The bridge will increase the signal, but decreases available bandwidth by half (approx.), according to the D-Link hotline.

Building a better, possibly directional antenne is probably a better solution.

I assume you mean building an antennae for the main router but I don't have a physical access to the router. I know its admin password but that's about it.


Lower bandwidth might not be an issue though, I only use the main router for the internet access. I don't need more that 5mbit/s as I don't transfer files over the network.

I could always buy a range extender, £50 would get me n-standard one but I would rather avoid that if I can. Network gear can be very hit and miss so if the I was to buy a second hand router and it failed to solve the problem I don't mind writing off £10 as loss and giving it as a gift to a friend or family. But if the new extender fails, the £50 loss will be annoying...

Assuming both your Router and Mac/PC has a spare ethernet port and that each is also in close proximity to a free mains plug, why not consider using PowerLine adaptors?

See...

HERE

(will be MUCH faster & more reliable than wifi)

HTH.

I can't. The main router is in the flat bellow me, my landlord lives there and we don't share circuits.

I bought Netgear WGR614L on Ebay for £8.50 incl. delivery. I will give it a go and see what happens.

That's your main advantage, although adding a directional antennae to your equipment may also help - obviously you need suitable connectors.

Good luck installing the custom firmware on your super-cheap router. Here's hoping it's awesome, and we expect updates!

I've always found WDS to be rather flakey on the rare occasions when I can force it to work tbh. The problems stem from WDS not actually being a standard, so each manufacturer finds a different way to bugger it up.

However, it does look as though you don really have much of a choice. And if new firmware on an £8.50 router solves it, that'd be excellent. Keep us posted - I've never had the bottle to try it.

Agreed. I did have it working in a previous home setup but only then because all (and I mean literally every single piece) of networking kit was from the same manufacturer. Soon as I installed something with another label on it, the whole thing went titsup.


Jon

The main router is Netgear DG834G so I hope they will play nicely together. I will let you know once I got it and set it up.

Oh, I was using one of those for ages. Never gave me any trouble. Good luck with that.

You're going to hate me for saying this of course, but it's a doddle with Apple kit. Just set one up using 802.11N airport kit and it's faster than the powerline HD units I was using before...

Jon

Update:

I have received the router and I tried to set it up. I google the instructions to set it as a repeater but when I tried to follow them it became clear that I am missing a menu item on the config page of the router. This is caused by an old firmware version so I downloaded the latest firmware and tried to upgrade the router. After few unsuccessful attempts to upgrade I turned again to google and found out that I have Virgin branded router and it won't let me upgrade the firmware.

There is a way around it though and the feedback on the results of this upgrading process is mostly positive. But I will need more time so I have to leave for now and wait for the weekend.

Sorry to hear that

Methinks it's time for the recipe for Chuck Norris' favourite meal.

------------------------------------------------------------
Ingredients:

• Can of Wup-Ass

Method

1. Open the can

Doesn't sound too complicated, if it works...

I hope so. But the amount of steps are needed is worrying me, plenty to go wrong but I will give it a go.

It never even crossed my mind that routers are not always (vanilla) "routers". I've bought the same model (different version) few years ago for my parents but I just set it up (as a regular "dumb" router) and it worked. I didn't have to upgrade it or anything so this firmware business threw me off a bit.

Yeah - they're buggers for that.