Computer Related > How many of you have wireless problems? Miscellaneous
Thread Author: RattleandSmoke Replies: 22
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New Tue 3 Apr 12 14:05 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - RattleandSmoke
Just doing a bit of market research. The phone has been a little quiet and have been updating my website a lot. 90% of my custom in March was repeats and recommendations but it wasn't enough.

I have a very good domain name I have not done anything with and was thinking of offering wireless repeaters for a very good value sum including a good warranty.

I just wondered do enough people live in big houses who have such a problem? Never been such a big problem before but with more and more wireless gadgets and ISPs such as Virgin now providing free routers I can see a bigger market.

I put this out of computing as I wanted a wider audience to see it, and the question is simply would you pay somebody to install a gadget (a wireless repeater) to give you much better range?
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New Tue 3 Apr 12 14:24 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - Old Navy
I don't have a problem and I can see eight networks belonging to my neighbours at the moment all with usable signal strength. These are all detached bungalows and reasonably well separated. Is this the problem you think it is?
Last edited by: Old Navy on Tue 3 Apr 12 at 14:27
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New Tue 3 Apr 12 14:29 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - rtj70
I've never had a problem with range for WiFi to any part of this house or the previous one. Last one was a large Edwardian 4-bedroom house. In fact in that one I got a signal at the bottom of the garden too with the router at the front of the house.

I think the issue with poor signal strength is more to do with construction of the house - wall thickness, what is the wall made of, etc.

I'm not sure there will be a lot of demand if I am honest. And for homes where there is a need to say connect a console or STB to broadband where the signal is poor, they are just as likely to go down the Home Plug route.
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New Tue 3 Apr 12 14:32 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - RattleandSmoke
Well I asked because I did a house in Heaton Moor last week. A big 5 bedroom type with basement. They spent a fortune on buying better adapters etc. It would not connect to the network as it could not gain an IP address for the router. I did experiment and bought the router into the basement and it connected. A added a range extender on the floor above, xbox now gets full signal and works perfectly in the basement.

As not many people know what repeaters are it seemed like there could be demand for these which I could market.

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New Tue 3 Apr 12 14:35 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - rtj70
You'd have to market it so people who do not know about repeaters understand they might benefit.

There aren't many 5 bedroom houses about. And not everyone has converted the cellar ;-) We didn't use the cellar for anything like that in the old house. Nor do we in this one. And I get a good signal strength in the cellar in this house too.

If your market is for large 5 bedroom houses needing strong wifi signals in the cellar.... market may be limited.

... and if you find there is a market, what's stopping the guy running the computer shop in the Heatons (the old Threshers) advertising a similar service in his shop window ;-)
Last edited by: rtj70 on Tue 3 Apr 12 at 14:36
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New Tue 3 Apr 12 14:29 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - RattleandSmoke
You can't really do much about that though, I would be more concerned about the insulation of them :D. It does mean you may have more interference but modern 802.11N routers are designed to do their best to avoid that.

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New Tue 3 Apr 12 15:01 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - Bagpuss
My apartment is 2 floors plus basement (my home office). The floors are concrete, the supporting walls are concrete and the nonsupporting walls are brick. No matter where I put the wireless router, I can't get a WiFi signal in every room. When I get round to it I will install a repeater. If there are places built like this in Manchester, there's probably a market to install repeaters.
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New Tue 3 Apr 12 15:05 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - RattleandSmoke
Nothing is stopping anybody from doing that is the nature of the free market, but I have plenty of work with areas with computer people.

I might just make a page on my website and stick a limited addwords budget and see what happens but I won't spend a fortune in marketing this.

I just need to get away from the break fix model as its too unstabe.
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New Tue 3 Apr 12 15:13 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - Dog
My laptop works perfectly well 12 metres away from the router (its a long cottage!) and the signal has to come through a thick granite wall.
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New Tue 3 Apr 12 15:51 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - Zero
>> The floors are concrete, the
>> supporting walls are concrete

All steel reinforced concrete - you are living in a faraday cage.
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New Tue 3 Apr 12 16:04 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - Bagpuss
>> All steel reinforced concrete - you are living in a faraday cage.

Correct. Can be a real problem here with the way the buildings are apparently constructed to survive the next 800 years or so.

I regularly visit a technology centre constructed around 12 years ago. It consists of a large building, housing offices which are mainly intended for use by startup technology companies. The building is essential a steel frame with reinforced concrete floors. There are aluminum blinds covering the floor to ceiling windows. If you are more than about 2m away from a window, there is no mobile phone reception.
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New Tue 3 Apr 12 16:08 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - Falkirk Bairn
Powerline kit - ethernet over the mains wiring is the answer to thick walls - used to be about £80 for a pair - seems you can now start off at about £30.........cheap and saves a lot of messing about.
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New Tue 3 Apr 12 16:17 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - Bagpuss
>> Powerline kit - ethernet over the mains wiring is the answer to thick walls

Had mixed experience with Ethernet over Powerline. Sometimes it works, sometimes it works a bit, sometimes it doesn't work at all, and even on a good day it's nowhere near as fast as WiFi. Had 2 powerline kits over the years, in both of them one of the powerline adapters eventually gave up the ghost.
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New Tue 3 Apr 12 16:19 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - RattleandSmoke
Same here there are too many variables involved with the clients electrics and there is no way of knowing if it will work until you try. It is why I tend to avoid the Ethernet over power line options.

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New Tue 3 Apr 12 16:26 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - Armel Coussine
There are one or two steel beams and pillars here and there in this recently extended house. The wireless modem is at one end of the house and it can be difficult or sporadically difficult getting wifi reception at the other.

I've got a device that brings the internet through the power circuit interleaving it cleverly with the much higher pressure cycling of the mains. My nephew set it up and it seems like magic to me. But if it doesn't work even after rebooting it means BT, our server, is being iffy as it sometimes is (something about elderly phone cables). Some sort of firewire cable is best anyway I always find.
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New Tue 3 Apr 12 17:21 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - Manatee
I know two people with this sort of problem.

One is in a converted village hall that is long, and the insertion of a first floor means there is probably a fair amount of steel in it now. He has a repeater.

The other has a seven bedroomed 3 storey Edwardian terrace, and had his wireless modem router on the third floor. Infirmity means he now lives on the ground floor and he has had to move the router.

I suspect the problem might be worse in densely populated areas where there are lots of different signals going on.

We have a 1950s bungly hole, and with the router in the middle somewhere it just about gets to all parts.

I think wireless is rapidly becoming the standard now, so the opportunities for you must be material. Lots of people wouldn't have a clue how to solve the problem themselves.
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New Tue 3 Apr 12 17:32 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - Meldrew
I live on a 20 year old housing development, semis and detached and not packed in. I get my own plus 2 other very strong signals, 3 very weak and 3 BT Hotspots.
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New Tue 3 Apr 12 17:41 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - smokie
While my (secured) connection is visible much further away than I thought likely, I cannot get a decent connection wirelessly diagonally across the (late 60s) house from my upstairs office (where the line comes in) to the back of the lounge, so I have a repeater on a wire.
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New Tue 3 Apr 12 17:39 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - Dulwich Estate
I have problems getting a good signal upstairs no more than 10 metres away from the router which is located on the ground floor. It's helped a bit by placing it on top of a shelf unit which gets it close to the ceiling.

It's just about OK, but I can't get a signal everywhere and positions where I can use a computer are a little compromised.

If my needs for the internet were just a little greater I could be in the market for a repeater.

I understand that UK property owners in France with gites and outbuildings are often users of repeaters.
Last edited by: Dulwich Estate on Tue 3 Apr 12 at 17:39
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New Wed 4 Apr 12 08:51 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - AnotherJohnH
>> I have problems getting a good signal upstairs no more than 10 metres away from the router which is located on the ground floor.
>> It's helped a bit by placing it on top of a shelf unit which gets it close to the ceiling.

You may find there is interference upstairs from a neighbour's wireless.

If you run a program like wifianalyser on your smartphone, or the free

www.metageek.net/products/inssider/

on a windows laptop, you can see what else is visible on "your" channel upstairs - then change your channel to a less busy one if that is the problem.

AFAIK you want any "interference" to be at least 20dB below your signal level for good service.
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New Wed 4 Apr 12 10:46 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - Crankcase
I ran a wireless sniffer as I was getting a very poor results in one room at home where I needed a good signal. Not much chance of me changing the channel effectively though - 43 wireless networks visible using every channel.

Still, a colleague put me in my place yesterday. I was going down the "how can you, in 2012, not have even seen Netflix or Angry Birds" route, and he said that he liked technology such as Facebook, but only because it allowed him to arrange meetings with real people in the evenings. A concept so alien it need not be considered of course.

Last edited by: Crankcase on Wed 4 Apr 12 at 10:46
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New Tue 3 Apr 12 18:37 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - FocalPoint
I have absolutely no problem anywhere in this quite large four-bedroom house with wi-fi from a BT home hub situated towards one side on the ground floor - but this is a timber-frame, brick-skin construction and I imagine is fairly transparent to radio waves. All internal walls are stud-type.

In addition to my own router my laptop can "see" three other networks, with good signal strength for two of them. If I take it upstairs, it can see a total of six networks apart from my own.
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New Tue 3 Apr 12 18:45 
 How many of you have wireless problems? - mikeyb
I can see 7 networks including the school opposite, from my lounge - this is a modern road of mostly detached houses.

Dose the router you have make a difference to signal strength?

I have one of the orange livebox's and I can still use my laptop in the garden about 25 feet from the house
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