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Help with router

samandrhia

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Posted December 28, 2011 at 10:47AM

We all had new gadgets for christmas, and I don't think my router will cope! I am using the Netgear N150 which came with my orange broadband. It is connected with a cable to my desktop computer in the hall. There are 4 of us, and we all have wireless laptops and smart phones which we use round the house. My son as an xbox (with live) which is in his bedroom, my daughter uses the WII in her room, and my husband has a works IPAD. Yesterday, my husband and me were both on laptops and my kids on their consoles and we all kept losing connection. Is it just a case of buying a more powerful router, and if so, any suggestions on what would be a decent one? Thank you.

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difarn

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Posted December 28, 2011 at 11:59AM

Reading the write up on your router it should be able to cope.

It seems from blogs I have read that the x-box would be much better if attached by an ethernet cable to the router as it is prone to interference from all sorts of things and wireless is not brilliant for gaming. If this is not possible the advice is to try a homeplug which extends the wireless signal.

It is also advised that you perhaps change the wireless frequency of the router - a default setting is 6 so you should perhaps try 9 or 11. To do this you will need to type in the url of your router (may be 192.168.0.1) into the address bar at the top of your browser - this should take you to the home page of your router - you will need your passwords - default usually set to admin/admin unless you have changed it. You should then be able to navigate to settings.

At the same time you could check to see if your router's firmware is up to date.

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ordep

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Posted December 28, 2011 at 12:01PM

Check out the E3000. Get's good reviews & support is very good.

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mgmcc

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Posted December 30, 2011 at 8:07AM

A couple of things to bear in mind:

Some routers are designed to limit the number of simultaneous wireless connections. If this is the case with your router, you could be trying to connect with too many wireless devices and hence the disconnections.

Unlike wired ethernet connections, where each device will have the full 100Mbps speed (1000Mbps with Gigabit), the bandwith of "wireless" connections is shared by the connected devices. Run four wireless devices with 150Mbps 802.11n (which will probably be closer to 100Mbps in practice) and each connection will only connect to the router at about 25Mbps.

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