Linksys WRT54G Wireless Router Signal is horrible!

I bought a new asus laptop 2 months ago and its decent. However, the wireless seems to be very poor. I'm about 2-3 rooms away from my room in the living room and i usually get 3 bars at the most on my laptop. Even on my itouch when i use it at the living room, the signal is really bad and many times the connection disconnects. I use Road Runner Cable Internet.

Can someone tell me what is wrong with my linksys router? Or could it be my laptop from asus? I don't think its asus because my itouch signal is poor as well from the living room. But if i use the laptop/itouch in my room, signal is 5 bars perfect.

Can someone tell me what settings i need to change in my wireless router? Such as what mode G or B and mixed or whatnot? What about the channel? Its always 1, 6 or 11 for me. What about security mode? I have it WPA Personal at the moment. Its a Linksys WRT54G and Version 4.1 if that means anything. And besides the laptop and itouch, i don't have any video games or anything like that that need to connect to my router. My old laptop dell inspiron 6000 however, rarely any had any signal problems when i'm in my living room and far away from my router.

Does anyone know what is my problem here?

 

Lots of variables here... do you live in a thin walled apartment, or an older solid (concrete??) walled house? Are there lots of ducts/metal in between you and the router, are there devices like microwaves or phones? Do you have lots of wireless neighbours (google inssider to find out if you don't already know), and if you do are you using a mostly clear channel?

Set the router to G only (nobody uses B anymore really), wpa2 aes. If nothing above helps try updating your drivers and/or router firmware, but it sounds like your house might have interference.

 

My building is very old. We live in apartment. Right now i just put the router on the top of my desktop computer. Before it was on my computer table and i just read you should put the router higher to get better signal. is this true? I have 1 telephone in my room and 1 more in the kitchen and that is the room before the living room.

 

Install inSSIDer and check what channels are free in your area. In an apartment (building?) there could be 30 other wireless routers which would cause major signal degredation. Try changing to the channel with the least amount of people using that one. It's always 1, 6 or 11 like you said also as those are the only non-overlapping channels.

 

By default with the stock Linksys firmware the Tx (transmit power) is set relatively low. You might consider flashing the router with a 3rd party firmware like DD-WRT and then going into the router bios and increasing the transmit power slightly.

Here is a demo page on DD-WRT's site. Tx Power is the second item in the list.

Here is a link to the router database. Enter you model number to get the necessary files and documentation.

Here is a link on how to flash the router

You should also pick a channel that no one else is using as the poster above suggested.

 

agreed wholeheartedly, DD-WRT on any router that supports it is a fantatic upgrade.

 

^^^ Thirded; flashing to a third-party firmware like DD-WRT is like a CPU/Memory upgrade for Routers IMO.

 

I wish I could put DD-WRT on my darn belkin. Its time for an upgrade. .