Need advice on Wireless NIC

My apt's roof was damaged by Rita. The whole building has bad
water damage, and every apt will have to be "gutted". I'll be living
at my brother's for the coming months.
He has 2 PCs sharing the cable modem over a NetGear MR814 v3
Wirless B router. The kids PC connects to the roter by it wireless
port with a Edimax EW-7126 NIC. The router is in a different room
about 25ft away. The signal is usally very good to excellent. Even
though, when I check the speed of the internet from the wireless PC,
it sometimes is slow. (4Mbit connection down to 1Mbit). When it's slow
like this, I check it from the wired PC, and it gets full speed, so
it's not slow internet. I'm thinking it's the wireless NIC.
I'm gona setup my PC here, but will need a wireless NIC as
well. What's a good one with range of 200ft, and can handle 4Mbit
easily at that range.

Larry Roberts wrote:
> My apt's roof was damaged by Rita. The whole building has bad
> water damage, and every apt will have to be "gutted". I'll be living
> at my brother's for the coming months.
> He has 2 PCs sharing the cable modem over a NetGear MR814 v3
> Wirless B router. The kids PC connects to the roter by it wireless
> port with a Edimax EW-7126 NIC. The router is in a different room
> about 25ft away. The signal is usally very good to excellent. Even
> though, when I check the speed of the internet from the wireless PC,
> it sometimes is slow. (4Mbit connection down to 1Mbit). When it's slow
> like this, I check it from the wired PC, and it gets full speed, so
> it's not slow internet. I'm thinking it's the wireless NIC.
> I'm gona setup my PC here, but will need a wireless NIC as
> well. What's a good one with range of 200ft, and can handle 4Mbit
> easily at that range.


I seriously doubt there's any such thing as a WiFi connection that can
go 200ft. I think the maximum range is 100ft and that's when you're
outdoors in an open field. I think the practical indoor range is
about 30ft, so at 25ft, you are close to its limit.

One thing you might want to do to boost your signal is to get an
aftermarket replacement antenna from your NIC manufacturer, if
available. Usually these antenna are much larger than their standard ones.

Another possibility to try is to use a USB WiFi adapter instead. You can
connect the USB device to a cable and take it high up into the room to
try and get a better signal. You're not limited to keeping right behind
your computer this way.

Yousuf Khan