Slashdot Mirror
Wireless Routers for Congested Areas?
An anonymous reader asks: "I have been living close to campus at UW Madison for the past six months or so and have come across a problem. We, along with everyone else in the area, have a wireless router, both a Belkin 54g and a Linksys WRT54G. We have Charter 3 Mbit down/.25 Mbit up cable and 6 guys in our apartment. Just on our block about 15-20 people have routers. We are constantly plagued with problems connecting to the wireless, staying connected, getting connected after rebooting, hibernating, and so forth. We have to reset the cable modem and the router many times a day to get everything rolling again. I am thinking that the router is the problem, because my dad always told me that's why they have twenty dollar routers up to thirty thousand dollar routers. What router can I purchase that will help my situation and will work well in a congested college area?"
Easy, snarf your neighbor's wireless connection, and dump your router entirely.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Here's a stupid idea !
Use aluminum foil as wallpaper. Not only will it will bounce off your neighbors airwaves and block out alien mindreading capabilities but it will protect you in case of a fire !
If you're in that noisy an environment, your best bet is to use signal isolation technology. What it does is provide a focused signal path between nodes on your local network, generally confining your traffic to that path (so it doesn't interfere with your neighbors') and deflecting all but the strongest interference from outside signals. It's marketed under several names and it's available in different specs, but the generic term for it is "wire".
http://alternatives.rzero.com/