Wireless signal strength problems

ora

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Hey all.

My parents are having an odd issue with their wireless, and I'm lost I think.

They have ADSL connected via a Netgear DG834G v2 adsl modem/router/g wireless access point.

My folks have two old 12" aluminium powerbooks, a 1ghz and a 1.5 ghz i think, both on the last 10.3 increment. A few weeks ago they started getting little to no wireless signal when connecting to the router. Even sitting a few feet away they get 1-2 bars, and even just outside the door of the room with the router in it, 0-1 bars.

I have my MacBookPro 2.33 from my sig here now as well, and i get 3-4 bars everywhere in the house, and on the floors above and below the router. I guess my card is better, being one of the newer draft-n ones, but I've never seen this difference in reception between them before.

Nothing has changed about their network setup, i have rebooted the machines and the router - no change. I noticed a new network in the house next door so i changed the channel from 6 where it was, to both 1 and 11, the two channels that have no overlap with 6, and that was if anything, worse, so its back on 6 again. I also tried enabling interference robustness and that didn't help either.

I've also run kismac on my machine and can see no other strong networks nearby, just the neighbours and the odd other random one that momentarily appears at about 2% signal strength. I even removed and reseated one of the airport cards and checked the arial conenction was good, no change there either.

What have I forgotten? The machines seem otherwise fine, the router is fine and reports no faults or issues when i log into its webadmin, nothing has changed that I know of but both the old powerbooks get a reduced signal.

Cheers folks!

ora
 
Still sounds like interference to me. Did anyone move into the neighborhood who might have an older wireless phone?
 
Thanks gshali. Yeah it does to me too, I just can't find any sources. By old wireless phone you mean an old style cellphone right? from before they dropped the transmitter strength. No one has moved in or out, and I doubt anyone would buy a new one, but I shall keep an eye out.

If it is interference I guess my options all cost: new macs (both laptops need to be replaced reasonably soon anyway), new router that is higher power perhaps (though no guarantee this will work) or maybe something like those netgear homeplugs that use the power system.
 
Older cordless phones used the same (almost) 2.4 GHz freq as wifi b & g. Microwave ovens are near that, too.

If that's not it, maybe just a new router will do.
 
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Aha! One of our oldish cordless phones recently went wrong after being dropped in water, but is still plugged in!

Cheers! I'll try changing it.
ora
 
I turned out to be a defective router in the end. I took my (identical) router, cloned the settings from the problematic one onto it, hooked it up and it all works fine now.

Odd though, that the router's method of failure was to work, but to not give a strong signal only to older airport cards and not to my newer one. I had assumed my lack of issues with wireless connections from my MBP meant the router itself worked OK.
 
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