Wireless worries

I have a wireless router, I have a supposedly fast connection (it never is even with only one PC attached), so theoretically there shouldn’t have been a problem adding my laptop to the network. Sure.

First-off I had protected my PC (running Windows XP) so that it could not be accessed by external users, but even though I knew my own password, I couldn’t get the router to accept the laptop (Windows 7).  I also couldn’t access the router – the default user and password (as supplied in the documentation) didn’t work. So I phoned the phone company (who provided the router) and found that it was best to pay 9.90 shekels a month for technical support. As this is no longer a private affair, I agreed to this. It took a long while, but eventually the laptop was set up and could see both the router and the printer. In order to be efficient, I was sitting with the laptop next to the PC, thus was not aware that there would be other problems.

When I took the laptop back to my office, I noticed that the signal strength was poor to fair, and often I couldn’t access the router at all. In previous posts I mentioned that to download updates (or anything large) I would move the laptop to be near the router. In addition, the printer was always offline unless I was right next to the router. Recently it just became too much and there was one day when I could hardly access the internet. I went onto the PC network map and saw that I had intruders accessing my (by now unsecured) network. So I marked them as intruders and phoned the phone company. This time they first secured the network so I would no longer have intruders, and made it so I could still access the router from my laptop. But that didn’t solve the problem of the poor signal, and I was recommended to buy an extender (they call it a repeater - 9.90 shekels a month for 24 months – special offer).

So off I went to town and waited for a long time in a queue to buy the extender. I got it home, installed it and could not find a convenient place near an electric outlet that could reliably receive a signal from the router. I was getting really fed up at this point. I found an extension cable and eventually located a reasonable spot (near the door) in our guest bedroom (the extender has to be approximately mid-way between the router and the laptop) that received a good signal from the router. The only problem is that we now have cables snaking across the guest bedroom (apologies to children who have left home and had their bedrooms reassigned).

Okay, so finally I received a good signal, the download speed was improving, but now the printer was offline. Another call to the phone company, we redefined the printer, and would you believe it I think that I now have proper and reasonable wireless connectivity!