1. Placement. If the ap is at one end of the house and you're trying to
pass through the entire house and all of it's walls, then perhaps you could
place the ap more central in the house.
2. Look for interference. Some phones run on 2.4 Ghz. If your friend has
one or there's another in the neighborhood. Configure for another channel.
Perhaps there's someone in the neighborhood who also is using wireless B
or G , in that case also get off their channel and take one that's
independient of theirs. You'll need a 5 channel seperation to have almost
no interchannel interference. Commonly channels 1 6 and 11 are 3
independent channels.
3. These days most ap's have strong enough radios to get through a good
sized home that would include one with a basement as well. Look at your
client card. I noticed that the imbedded Intel Radios stink. I set up a
laptop for someone and had that situation and got a card that went into the
pcmcia slot , because the intel radio was/is so bad. Rmember for
connectivity you're dependient upon the sender's radio and the receivers
radio. In most cases one should get an ap and client card from the same
manufacture because they do something proprietary to 802.11.
I noticed that router has B and G only. I think Linksys may also make a
model with mimo in it. Mimo will also give you better rate and range
however in that case you do have to have an ap that has a mimo radio and a
client card with a mimo radio.
Placement is the most significant factor. The rf and power of the rf is
static because you have a fixed radio, fixed antenna and no way of
improving power. RF is sensitive to polarity and interference from either
structures in the house or other radios. Look for these and try to move
the ap so that it's signal is stronger to where the clients are located.
Also as I said above , improve the clients also.
