3 stone walls increase connection problems?

I use vista, so I used the network and sharing center to tell me the connectivity of the wirless router in our house.

We use a D-Link Wireless G router, but I moved it into a more remote room in the house because my dad didn't like the phone line that connected to it going across the hallway.

Now, another member of my family says that his room is now going to have connection problems because there are 3 stone walls between him and his macbook.

My M1530 on vista picks up 4/5 Bars of wireless connectivity in his room. I also did speed tests on speedtest.net to see if it would be slower, but the speed difference between being next to the router and his room is within a margin of error (1kbps).

Now, the family member says he has had connection problems before the router was moved away from him. He thinks it will increase the issues now that the router has to travel through walls.

He says that a combination of a dodgey phone line and a poorly installed network card on his computer will have gotten worse because I moved the router. He thinks that the 3 walls will make more problems despite the only minor change being the position of the router and the fact the connectivity has decreased a small part (not much considering).

 

Even though he was probably just being finicky, just do some tests using his Macbook to see if there are any issues.

 

3 walls in general should not do that (depends on distace and the shape of your place too!). the wireless radio should bounce around the walls to your wireless card. however, having metal or water piping behind the walls will severely distrups the radio signal.

 

Also, why not try to get a better antenna contact on his internal wifi card. Shouldn't void the warranty if you just readjust them for a better contact. This trick worked on my 1000H (thanks eeeusers.com) as they were fairly loose when I received it.

 

They are fat stone walls, im talking 1 ft thick. But i get such a high connectivity on mine, 4/5 bars on the network sharing center (fluctuating between 4/5 and 5/5) do macbooks have regular problems with their wifi?

Maybe i should get a better antennae for the d-link?

 

You may want to replace the antennas on the router to some high gain ones to penetrate the way. If everyone is pretty much in the same area a beam antenna may work.

I would work on the phone wiring in the house so you can move the router to a better area. Fry's and other electronic houses sell phone line testers. It's possiable that who ever wired the house did not pay any attention to plarity. DSL use all 4 wires. I have seen, if one on the pairs are swapped it will not work, most of the phones do not care. I would go to all of the jacks and compare the wiring. Even simply cleaning them up may work. I was at one friends house that the phone company had wired the main junction wrong, I guess he was color blind. Swapped 2 wires and everything came up.