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?"
No, it' sonly illegal to go over the maximum power output regulations. As long as you do not combine and modify equipment to operate above regulation, it's legal. That's why you can buy higher dBm antennas in Walmart, they're designed to stay within spec. It's not illegal to boost power at all, it's only boosting power over regulation that's illegal. Here's a link to a Cisco support page listing some specs.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
Well, I wouldn't go this route, but you could easily go with A instead of G, then you won't have the cordless phones, microwave, people down the street, etc using the same frequencies. It may not be the cheapest solution, but is probably the best legal solution if you have to stick with wireless. If you want to stick with your wireless G equipment, I would go with directional antennas as they can be bought or made pretty cheap. Also, if you can stick your router in the basement and point the antenna upwards, then it will only receive strong signals from within your building. That should eliminate most of your interference. The best solution in my opinion would be to go with wired, esp when you are sharing all of your 'study materials' you will be able to transfer all of those educational videos a whole lot faster without worries about interference.