I recently set up a personal home network for someone, and I encrypted the network so that only his laptop and his desktop could access it. He has a large house, and the router is in one corner of the house with his kitchen on the other side. He is getting a weak signal in his kitchen, and his son told him that he would remove the encryption to give him a stronger signal. I am by no means a networking expert, nor am I, however, a novice, but I have never heard of encryption lowering the signal strength of a wireless network. I was always under the impression that the signal was the same, it just meant you had to have the key to get access to that signal.
Can anyone with a little better knowledge of this matter please help me out and let me know if I am right or not. Thanks for any help you guys can give!!
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Security has absolutly nothing to do with low signal. Sure it slows speeds down but just by a hair. Sadly, you need to move the router away from the kitchen. It operates on a 2.4 GHz frequency and that interferes with microwaves espeacially, fridges, stoves, dish washes, oven etc. Even tv's. So your best bet is to move the router.
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That's sort of the problem....the router is a long way from the kitchen to begin with. The kitchen is downstairs on one side of the house, and the router is upstairs on the other side of the house. I am thinking that a signal booster might be needed somewhere halfway in between....is that a reasonable assumption?
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Oh my bad, i thought you said the router was right by the kitchen, i guess you will need boosters and extenders to get rid of the dead spots so yes.
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I would try high-gain antennas before the booster, especially if you just need a slightly stronger signal. They're cheaper, and most boosters (like the Linksys) will halve the speed of the network to anything connected through the booster anyway.
Any way you can re-position the router in a more central location in the house? Maybe use a longer Cat5 cable between the router and modem if that's an issue?
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he wanted the router hard-wired to the desktop (it is really a hybrid network...not completely wireless) which is in his office, since the desktop isn't wireless-capable. Either way, I just wanted to confirm with you guys that I wasn't losing my mind and that his son was incorrect. Thanks guys....
Question about encryption
Discussion in 'Networking and Wireless' started by Tees0230, Nov 11, 2005.