Weak WiFi

[adc.]

Huw ti fiks wik wy fy?

 

Ok, first of all, don't tell me to put the wifi inches away from my laptop. If that was the solution, I would not be posting here, as I would have done that long ago. I'm approximately 4 meters away from the router yeah, and I'm getting about 3-4 bars. There are two walls obstructing the signal as the room I'm on has a bathroom in between.

 

I accept the fact that my signal is weak and my connection is unstable because of the obstructions etc. But I opened my old netbook I once used long ago, and its signal is 4 bars constant and the connection is pretty stable. And my brother who has a lamer laptop (an older and almost breaking down Asus i3) still gets a decent connection even if he's 8-10 meters away from the router.

 

tl;dr your rants: A netbook and a crappier laptop beats a year old, HP i5 which I haven't tormented yet. In terms of wi-fi

 

Netbook, Intel Atom, Samsung, 4 years old - Windows 7

 

Crappy Laptop, Intel Core i5, Asus, overheats a lot, 3 years old - Windows 7

 

My decent i5 laptop, doesn't overheat, cleaned once every two months, 1 year old - Windows 8

 

I suspect it must be the OS

 

Any help appreciated

[Cairo Jim]

I've noticesd that older laptops tend to get better, stronger, sturdier signals than newer laptops, regards of OS. The only thing I can think of is that WLAN cards are getting worse.

[Khoth]

It's more likely to be a crappy radio/antenna in your laptop than the OS.

 

You can get external antenna that helps when reception is bad (eg this sort of thing)

[adc.]

Also noticed that too. We once got a decent 3g router which we used for 3 or 4 years, and it was ultra stable, I rarely spike in games and stuff. By the time we moved to our new apartment, my dad bought almost the best one the company had to offer: a 4g Huawei one. My ping on a few games on the first month was stable and the same with the old one, and my normal DL speed was 1.5-2.5 mbps.

 

After a few months it sucked.

 

EDIT: There are a bunch of solutions out there, but I prefer the more software-ish type.

 

If there are none at all, then I might as well stick to Witcher and Skyrim

 

Although, danke for the replies Chewie and Beatrice

Edited April 26, 2014 by Wiedzmin of Skyrim

[keira]

consumer-grade routers use your standard "tube" antenna, which beams out wifi juice in a donut-shaped thing around it. many people are morons and "point" the antenna on their access point to the device they want to give the most wifi juice.

 

this is what the wifi juice looks like if your antenna is pointing straight up.

 

if your AP has an internal antenna then it's probably built to be attached to your wall vertically. attach it to your wall vertically.

 

laptop antenna are usually a wire loop going around the perimeter of your monitor. this means for best results position your machine so that the monitor is "square on" facing the antenna. your nose, monitor, and router should all be in a line, basically.

 

also, see if you can't tear out the obstructions. barring that run something like `watch iwconfig wlan0 | grep signal` (linux master race) and see what position gets you the most wifi juice.

 

there's not really any software solution to a problem with the physical transport medium of the protocol. if you are in an urban area switch to a channel that doesn't have everyone and their dog on it (your AP should do this automatically). most of the other settings, things like MTU and such, are fine As They Are And You Should Not Touch Them. also, try getting rid of some of the viruses that are taking up bandwidth, and stop downloading stuff in the background. maybe ask the brother to not stream Important Financial Documents while you game, since video usually has a thing called QOS which is basically "hey i'm a packet for a video and all y'all other packets suck so move over" which, uh, yeah.

 

remember that while a higher frequency means more bandwidth, it also means it can't get through obstructions as well. so if you don't need wireless-n speeds (if you are using a 4g modem, you probably don't) then try turning that radio off and falling back to b/g, which will have comprable speeds in reality, but less packet loss from signal degredation.

 

also it sounds like your internet is coming from cell service which means that all those things i just said about position apply to the modem/base station system too. good luck. it would help to see if your modem has a diagnostic setting to tell you which channel, base station, and such it is connected to. if you cant get that then ask yourself what carrier you have and where you live.