A simple fix for most WiFi signal strength problems

I'm often hearing from friends and clients who struggle with WiFi signal strength problems in their home or office. However there's always a solution to it and based on my own experience it's normally a trivial one. Here's some food for thought when approaching the task of deciding on the most appropriate solution.

Most of the time a WiFi repeater will provide an inexpensive solution to the problem. A wireless repeater will take an existing signal from a wireless router or access point and rebroadcast it to create a second network with an apparently seamless connection between the two networks. Those outside of the primary network will be able to connect through the new "repeated" network. Wireless repeaters are commonly used to improve signal range and strength within homes and small offices.

Generally speaking WiFi repeaters work best when positioned in an elevated setting within the room or space their WiFi signal is to be broadcast. That's because an elevated setting typically has fewer physical obstructions. However that elevated setting's not always easy to achieve in a home/office unless there's a high shelf or storage unit upon which the repeater can be placed. Furthermore this can also give rise to a problem of having an unsightly trailing power lead which is often undesirable in a home setting.

There's a popular preference for the wall-mounted type WiFi repeater. And it's understandable because they're compact and less obtrusive. Bear in mind though that they're often handicapped because they're likely do be plugged into a wall socket way down at shin level, and possibly obscured behind furniture and therefore not ideally situated to deliver optimum performance. For this reason they can deliver disappointing results.

The alternative to the plug-in adapter type repeater is the free standing type device such as the one pictured here. It'll have an external power adapter and most of these free-standing repeaters come with a wall-mounting kit. The device's external antennas are adjustable and help improve its WiFi signal strength.

In most situations either of the above products will do what's needed and I'm happy to recommend either. However I'd say the free-standing one is most likely to give the best/strongest signal, hence would be my first choice. Mine is sat on top of a book case and is out of sight but gives out a strong signal from up there.

How to check that a web site is safe to visit

Links to web sites present themselves to us in a myriad different ways. That link in a Facebook post that'll show us a funny video; an email from an acquaintance containing a link to an amazing special offer; a message posted in a newsgroup or forum containing a link to a valuable piece of information; the list is endless. Most of the time these links do exactly what is expected. However there are folks out there hoping to trick us into visiting some web page or launch a piece of code that'll attempt to perform some unexpected and probably harmful action. But, hey, I've got internet security software so I'm protected against this kind of thing, right? Not necessarily. It's not guaranteed that your internet security app, even when fully up-to-date, will 'know' about that new piece of malware and, therefore, may not be able to block it. So the best advice is  if you really want to proceed then do so with caution. Thankfully there are some resources out there that'll help. Here are a couple of sites the purpose of which is to check the safety of a web site when given the site's address.

McAfee's Site Advisor - It's not necessary to install the free download in order to use this resource. Instead I suggest you go ahead and enter the site's URL into the  text box in the right sidebar under the heading of View a Site Report (see image on right) and you'll see either a green (safe) or red (unsafe) at the beginning of the report. If you're interested to know more SiteAdvisor goes on to provide a lot more detail.

Norton’s SafeWeb (see screenshot below) works in a similar way to the McAfee site. When displaying a site’s threat report it contains user community input in the form of reviews and ratings in the right sidebar. The actual Norton review starts with the green (safe), orange (caution advised), red (unsafe) or grey (unknown) icon, followed by the threat report, that includes the results of 17 different malware tests. For certain sites, Norton’s SafeWeb also reports information of e-commerce safety (whether the site encrypts transactions and has a privacy policy).







In summary it makes perfect sense to use one or other of these sites to check out a web site if you're at all unsure about its safety.

Problems downloading attachments in hotmail? I’ve seen this and have fixed it. Read on to find out how I did it.

I was invited to assist a client who was struggling to overcome a newly evolved problem on her Windows 7 laptop. The issue is understood to have appeared following the removal of Google Chrome from the system. Specifically the user was no longer able to download email attachments from her hotmail account. All attempts to do so resulted in the appearance of the following pop-up message along the lower edge of the Internet Explorer 9 browser window. The wording in the dialog box reads… Do you want to save  Get attachment_aspx?file= xxxxxxxxxxxx with a dropdown menu giving options to save or save as. Clicking on either button or the ‘x’ resulted in no response. Yup… zombified!

One suggested solution I discovered involved either enabling or disabling the browser’s Silverlight add-on. Alas that step did nothing to help. Another suggestion I came across was to make sure that the program and file associations were set back to refer to IE rather than Chrome. This revealed that some associations were set incorrectly but updating them didn’t help. In the end updating the browser to IE10 nailed it for me. However I also updated the old style hotmail interface to the Outlook one at the same time; it may have played a part.
My hope is that one or more of these suggested solutions helps others searching for a fix to the same or a similar issue.

Got broadband connection problems?

If so here's something that'll hopefully help isolate the source of the issue.

It's worth starting the troubleshooting process with a restart of the router. So if you haven't already done that recently, do that now. Restarting the router is most easily achieved by disconnecting the router's power supply momentarily before reconnecting. Or if easier switch the router off at the wall socket. Then allow a couple of minutes before testing whether you're able to get to a web site. e.g. Google. If still not connecting read on.

I'd expect you to be able to find relevant, useful information in your router's log. To get to the router's log follow the instructions that came with the router which will show how to gain access to the router's administration console. As a general guide the administration console is typically accessed by typing the ip address of the router into the web address box in your web browser. You may, however, have a desktop shortcut or some other program to gain access.

As can be seen from the following screenshot the log lists the date and time of each connection attempt to your broadband service provider. If there are entries in the log which show multiple failed connection attempts in a short space of time it's normally an indication of a problem establishing a connection to your service provider.



Every router has a connection status display that lists information such as uptime – both for the ADSL connection and the router. Errors here are likely to be further indication that a connection to the broadband service is failing and, perhaps, why that is.

Most routers will provide some useful feedback on the quality of the signal on your phone line, too. Two parameters shown in the following screenshot are important: the amount of signal lost (line attenuation) and how ‘loud’ the signal is compared to background noise.

Line attenuation should ideally be low (60dB is on the poor side; 20dB is good), while the signal-to-noise ratio (labelled as Noise Margin in the above table) should be high (20dB is good; 6dB is on the poor side). A low SNR ratio makes it difficult for the router to sync with the DSLAM card at the telephone exchange. That said the figures for line attenuation and noise margin in this screen are on the poor side but my connection speed comes in at over 3Mbps which is perfectly useable and the connection is reliable.


Since the ADSL connection speed is adaptive, you can’t be sure what connection speed you’ve actually got and it does vary from one day to the next in my experience. However it's possible to see the connection speed from within your router's admin console, as above. Alternatively there are many broadband speed test sites, but we recommend the one offered by BT. To try it, head to speedtester.bt.com using the broadband line you want to test, enter your phone number and click on Go.

In my case I click on the up to 24Mbps option which matches the broadband service I subscribe to. The tests are then run and results page displays automatically. Mine came up with the following:

As can be seen the real world speed of my connection is nowhere near the advertised speed of 8Mbps :o(

As an additional test I can open up a command prompt window (see following screen for guidance on how to do that) and use the ping utility to measure the response time I'm getting from my PC to any given web site I visit. 

The following example shows me issuing a ping command using the Google web site as the target.

The response time to a ping command is measured in milliseconds and in this example is perfectly acceptable. If I were seeing responses which say Request timed out it would be indicative of a problem. If the Request timed out response is received from multiple web sites it's most likely a problem that exists somewhere between your service provider and your own PC rather than beyond. The tracert command will provide some more granular detail to the journey the ping requests are taking from your PC to the Google site and can help pin the performance issue down to a specific leg of the journey.

The first leg of the journey is to the destination 192.168.0.1 which is to my own router/gateway and took just 2 milliseconds which is about as fast as it can get. The other legs of the journey are outside of my router and across the internet. 

In summary I hope this article has provided some help in terms of providing places to go in search of clues which, hopefully, will help clarify why your internet connection isn't good and enable you to have a more informed conversation with the technical support folks at your service provider.