DIR-655 poor range

[pedroameireles]

Hi,

My Linksys WAG200 wireless ADSL router died, so I bought a new D-Link DIR-655, based on the good reviews I read everywhere. The problem is that the wireless range of the DIR-655 is worst than that of the Linksys! I was expecting to have better performance, or at least the same performance.

Just to give you an idea, I live in an apartment with 3 bedrooms and a living room and I have the router in one of the bedrooms. I have a Squeezebox Duet in the living room, approximatelly 15 feet away from the router and the signal strength is around 20%! And the Squeezebox Receiver is always losing the connection.

Is this normal? Is there anything I can do? I've already tried changing channels but it didn't help. I've also turned off my kid's baby monitor but it makes no difference. Could it be interference from other apartments? I would really love to have a wireless router that would give me full coverage all over the apartment and let's face it, my apartment is not that big!

Thanks in advance for any help.


Best regards,
Pedro Meireles.

 

[DaveMcLain]

I have one of these in my house(DIR-655) and I've tested other routers including Linksys WRT54G stock and with DD-WRT as well as with and without high gain antennas. I've also used the Netgear WGR614 all from the same location. From my testing the D-Link is as good as anything in my setting. I wonder if you just happened to get a bad one?

 

[thiggins]

Since you are using the router with just 802.11g clients, set the router 802.11 mode to 802.11g only or mixed 802.11b and 802.11g and set channel width to 20 MHz. Also try different channels using 1, 6 and 11.

 

[pedroameireles]

Thanks for your answers. I had already set the router to mixed 802.11b and 802.11g, because I have an old laptop that I sometimes use that is only 11b. I had also played with the different channels with no results.

So, I decided to take another aproach: move the router to another place. And voilá! I've made some improvements, just by moving the router approximatelly 4 feet away from where it was. Now I can get around 35/40% signal strength in the living room, which is quite good compared to what I had.

Some interesting stuff that I learned:

1 - Small adjustments to the antennas orientation can make a big difference on wireless range!
2 - As strange as this may seem (at least for me), the bigger the amount of cables I connect to the router, the weaker the signal it transmits! I've made that experience and with only one LAN port connected I could get around 48/50% signal strenght in the living room. With the WAN cable connected, the signal dropped to around 40% and with another LAN cable connected, the signal dropped to 30/35%! Does this make any sense?
3 - It never goes as fast as they say it does, it never goes as far as they say it does but I think it sets up as easily as they say it does

Thanks for all your help.


Best regards,
Pedro Meireles.