Wireless problems

[Thesunmaid]

 I am at a bit of a loss at the moment. I have a laptop which I use during the day while I work to post and chat on when its slow at work. Which is is slow dureing this time of year.

I have no idea what else to do right now..I would appreciate any suggestions anyone could give me and here are the things I have done so far to try and narrow down the problem. The back bedroom is about 400 feet or so from the router and on the same floor.(my house is all one level)

I have tried using the laptop in my living room where the wireless modem/router is worked not problem. Streamed 3 movies from three different sites no interruptions or problems with the wireless dropping.
So this ruled out a wireless card issue...but just in case I uninstalled and reinstalled my wireless drivers..same problem. I also tried using a fairly new(about 6 months old) USB wireless stick just to make sure it was not because of an old wireless card. (the laptop itself is not exactly brand spanking new but I also have the same problem with my tablet which is about 10 months old)

I have tried the trouble shoot problems with the windows connection and I have restarted the computer..The computer has Windows 7 32 bit and runs with no problems and all of my drivers are up to date. There is no maleware or spyware because I am sort of anal about that sort of thing and I scan very regularly.  There are three bedrooms none of which have any electronics in it except for an x box in my sons room which is turned off and I have tried unplugging it completely despite the fact it has no wireless card in it.

I have tried to change the channels on my wireless in case there is some kind of problem with us having the same channel as a neighbour and have used a program to check to see what the channels everyone around us is on.

During the day the only thing that's actively connecting during the day is my work computer and my laptop. But despite that since I have fiberop and a 150 mbps upload and 30 mbps down It should not matter if something else was connected and there are no other connections in my house other than our computers. So its not someone stealing our wireless which is locked down.

After all this the only thing I can come up with is there is some sort of electrical interference in the apartment below me somehow which I don't have a whole hell of a lot of control over. They are fixing up the apartment below but that I know of they are not doing any electrical work. It looks to be mostly carpentry and plumbing since they had a problem with leaks down there. Or there is something wrong with my modem/router provided to me by my service provider which is about 2 years old and not a brand known to break.I have no idea what it could be but I might be missing something.
Can anyone suggest anything? I would appreciate any ideas right now.

[Inkidu]

It could be an issue with your actual router.

[Geraint]

Depending on whether you have ever gotten wireless reception in that room, you may simply be too far from your router.  Both signal strength and throughput go down rapidly the further you get from a wireless router, especially if there is a lot of intervening building structure and metal.  Depending on the configuration of your place, you might want to try putting both your router and the computer in question by the nearest windows, as the signal may travel further outside than inside (though that didn't work for me). I have 50 Mb/s FIOS with a brand new extended range (Quantum) wireless router on the second floor of my home and the signal in the basement two floors directly below it was barely enough to support a constant connection.  Many larger or spread out homes have dead spots for wireless. 

If that's the case, there is a whole range of wireless signal extenders and repeaters for sale that can help with the problem, if you can't move your router or your computer closer. 

But for us the solution was simpler as we had a coax cable connection in the basement (for the TV) and we bought a $80 Actiontech wireless network extender from Verizon for the basement.  It communicates automatically with their router by cable, and became a secondary wireless signal source in the basement, with no appreciable loss of bandwidth or signal.

[Thesunmaid]

I think I have found the problem. My husband does networking at his job and his used a program to test if there is drops in the connection and it looks like my wireless for the router is dropping randomly or the signal weakens which would explain why it still seemed slow at times when I was in the living room. I have currently got a wireless router hooked up in my back bedroom and no problems with the wireless so far and if there is any problems I have the option to switch to wired since the router is about 2 feet from my laptop and I have a six foot cord. So I am going to be calling tomorrow to get them to swap out my modem because i am pretty sure the firmware is messed up. We were having slow speeds issues but they said that was due to the fact we had fiberop and high speed copper still showing on our account even though we have never had the copper wire connection..so I think they just didn't want to swap the modem out. So not setting this as fixed quite yet until I see what they say. But I have at least a temporary fix.

[Psi]

400 feet?  I have always viewed wireless as 50 meters or 150 feet for an effective range.
While a network can be detected at much greater distances, it doesn't mean its a usable speed.

As mentioned above, the structures between you and the access point make a huge difference.   I have had to place two moderm access points within 5 meters / 15 feet of each other due to 2 double brick walls (4 layers of brick) effectively absorbing the signal.

Older access points operating at 2.4 ghz (A/B/G wireless 54 mbit a second) often perform better at distance than 5 ghz ( N Wireless ) 130 mbit a second) or even AC Wirless at up to 1300 mbit a second.   Higher frequencies get absorbed my more surfaces. The denser the surface the less likely a signal will pass through.   Plaster is better than brick for letting it through.    What computer are you using?  If its a Mac you can hold down option and click on the airport menu.  It will tell you what channel and mode you are conencting on as well as a TX rate.  (Mine is 5 GHz, 802.11n and 300 mbit/sec.   Depending on location I have seen this as low as 15 mbit/sec)

I am jealous though - 150 mbit/sec up and 30 down?   I get 5 down and 1 up from our ISP.    It is an odd ratio for a consumer however, normally it would be the other way around.