Fried router

[Ebden~SPARTA~]

So the bulk of the move is complete, and I'm a bloody pile of muscle ache in recovery.

 

Now the fun starts. Cable man was in, ran new wires and had all of our services humming in a couple hours. That night (Monday night), we found the wireless wasn't working. After a call to service, they said the router had fried. Picked up an exchange yesterday (standard G-wireless 2-antenna from SMC), and this one is transmitting only a dozen feet or so. Second service call lined up for this afternoon to troubleshoot that one. The service dept. said he should come equipped with a few different router models, including their better 'N' version, to see what gives.

 

I don't think it's completely the fault of the router though. Our home inspection identified two rev. polarity outlets and other items fixed prior to our closing date. Now that we're in, I found three additional bad outlets. I'm also following a number of panel leads using old 2-wire romex...many 3-prong 15A outlets don't even have a ground at all! I tested the outlet that had provided router power, and it seemed steady at 123.6v/59.95hz (visual on my fluke meter for about 15s). It did however show a 12vAC leak from the Hot to Ground (357mA leak neutral-ground).

 

What else might be causing problems? I'm likely going to run new romex to a couple office outlets, and replace the outlets too, hoping to mitigate who-knows-what behind the walls. The panel is an appropriate breaker 100a service, but I'm all scared-like for what I'm going to find over the coming weeks!

 

This is the panel pre-fix (the wirenut connection should be dealt with now).

 

[Batwing~SPARTA~]

hi there

 

I am not aware that power may compromise the wireless range for a working router. I could be misinformed on this.

 

However there a few other situation could compromise your wireless range. usually those are electrical interferences and electric waves generated by other apliances.

 

It happened once while I was installing a pretty long range wireless network (wireless had to work on a range of about 100 feet), I had to test several location for the router to finally find the "sweet spot" to perform a decent connectivity.

 

As rules of thumb:

 

1 - router should be located at a high spot - this allows the radio waves to expand with minor obstacles, think about an umbrella.

 

2 - try to avoid solid walls - concrete, bricks -. Whatever behind these "shield" will have hard time to get connection.

 

3 - stay away from media center locations with big TVs, amplifiers, other wireless products (as wireless phones and similar), each one of these create radio waves interfering and killing the wireless signal

 

4 - electrical dispersions on your electric grid - this may interfere as well

 

5 - be aware that microwaves oven produce a huge amount of interfence, so you would prefer to not have that on the path of your connection

 

 

And then test, test, test till when you achieve a decent connection. remember, you don t need to be connected to the Internet to test a router. Your router just have to be on and transmitting and then your PCs will be connecting to it, showing the connection signal strenght.

 

Once you find the right spot, manage to install the internet modem right there and you are done.

 

Suggestion: use a laptop, possibly a recent model with a decent internal radio (or a USB wireless connector) to move around your place monitoring the signal strenght. Using this method you could also find the bad spots for electric dispersion or solid walls disabling your connection.

 

Good luck

[Ebden~SPARTA~]

Cable guy swapped modems and changed the jack at the junction box on the pole. The signal is improved, but he isn't sure why, because the previous equipment all tested out fine (except for wireless tx/rx) Anyhow, he checked it off to crappy refurbished equipment. I still need to sort out the house electrical, the ground issues are funky and I don't know how long this machine will work with such bad power. This weekend will be power project time.