This just doesn't protean to Verizon Fios, but with all the routers that I've tried with all the cable companies, I feel kind rip off. You will see commercials about how you can use wifi through out your home and sometimes outside in your backyard or even your front yard. All I got to say is HOG WASH! Sometimes I can get even 20 ft from my router and I start losing some connection!
Why do these cable company keep giving us these out dated wireless routers?
Now I was told that I can call and demand a 802.11b/g/n
The "N" being the newer model....
Have you done any sort of troubleshooting to improve your reception?
-Changing the broadcast channel?
- Relocating the router?
- Moving interfering devices?
@Tinkertron wrote:This just doesn't protean to Verizon Fios, but with all the routers that I've tried with all the cable companies, I feel kind rip off. You will see commercials about how you can use wifi through out your home and sometimes outside in your backyard or even your front yard. All I got to say is HOG WASH! Sometimes I can get even 20 ft from my router and I start losing some connection!
Why do these cable company keep giving us these out dated wireless routers?
Now I was told that I can call and demand a 802.11b/g/n
The "N" being the newer model....
I hate to break it to you, but new wireless standards have nothing to do with transmission power. They're all about generating higher bandwidth at the same propagation.
If you want to increase your propagation, you're going to have to buy a larger antenna (they're cheap). I have a 16dBi antenna on my router and I can drive down my street before my phone loses its connection.
Are you by any chance using alluminum insulation in your home? Many older homes in my area which use that type of insulation or other "Faraday Cage" materials tend to cause issues with Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi doesn't penetrate as well as way, Cell Phone signals would just due to the frequency they operate at and maximum broadcast power as permitted by the FCC.
20 feet shouldn't make or break Wi-Fi like that with any router unless the Antenna is this tiny thing such as what is seen on mobile Hotspot devices. Quite honestly I would investigate any sources of interference, as suggested above. This includes both radio signals and anything physical in your home. Router placement (Corners are such terrible places) might also be the case here.
As far as the new Wireless standards go, most of what you hear in regards to range extension systems are proprietary. Only a few vendors have it with their own implementations on how to boost range. You cannot increase power beyond what is allowed by the FCC (well, you can but you don't want to be on that side honestly), so what some of these proprietary things do, besides relying on improved antenna designs on both ends, is use methods such as beam forming to use walls to their advantage by using reflected signals to improve the reliability of a signal. Techs such as MIMO, which has really started taking off in Wireless N solutions do help with stability, but again, you are not getting very far or very much out of it since those technologies are just used to improve connectivity in dead spots.
So in the big picture, especially with N, if you cannot hold a reliable 20Mhz signal 20 feet from your router on 2.4Ghz, you can probably forget Wireless N running on a 40Mhz wide channel since that further reduces stability and you can forget 5Ghz signals since they don't penetrate as nicely.
Changing the broadcast channel?
How is this done?
You can change the channel in use by logging into your router (Http://192.168.1.1), and going to
wireless settings>Basic Security.
While this may improve things, the basic problem with Wi-Fi is that it is unlicensed, and multi-use spectrum. I.E. the FCC has allocated the spectrum used by Wi-Fi for several different uses, and as long as the intent of these uses is NOT to cause interference, the use is legal. This means that you may be getting interference from cordless telephones, other Wi-Fi systems in the vicinity, and several other types of devices. There are going to be situations where none of the available channels are going to work especially well because of the interference caused by other users and uses.
Your other choice is to try and improve the signal you receive with directional antennae. Again, no guarantees that this will work either.
Good luck
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