Wireless woes

[brammers]

Hi all,

I've just set up a new O2 wireless box for my flat. We've got 3 laptops (2x Vista, 1x XP) and a Windows 7 desktop trying to connect. The flat is about 15meters long on 1 floor and has a couple of thick stone interior walls (typical Edinburgh townhouse if you're familiar) to the furthest computer - other computers have less distance. The router is a pretty basic Thomson box as (rather lovingly) described here:

http://www.dannytsang.co.uk/category/networking/

We're all experiencing very intermittant connection issues with the box. At times the connection is great, at times very poor with frequent drops. My desktop has real difficulty connecting at all, where as my laptop is much better - strangely distance from the router doesn't seem to make too much difference.

The broadband speed also varies considerably - from very good to very, very slow. When we're having wireless connection problems things are obviously very slow, but there's slowness the rest of the time too.

I've got all my antennas vertical, the OS wifi signals are all 4-5 bars out of 5 and I can't think of anything crazy cabling wise going on in the house - the walls are fairly thick but that's it.

What can I do about this without going to the expense and effort of getting massive extension cables and sticking the router right in the middle of that flat? Are there any little tips and tweaks in the setup, and should I believe the 4 bars out of 5 reading in Win 7/Vista? It certainly doesn't feel like the router isn't struggling... Any little tweaks in the config?

I know it's very vague, but a link to a tutorial would suit me fine for now! If I can't do anything myself, I'll get on the phone to O2 or get the router installed in the middle of the flat.

Cheers all!

[brammers]

Just to add one more symptom - it's quite common that a machine can't connect to the network, even though the network appears in the wireless networks list with 5 bars of connectivity. I've absolutely no idea what's going on here, so I'd appreciate any advice!

Cheers!

[smargh]

Are there any other wireless access points in the vicinity? There are only three 11b/g channels which don't overlap.

Also, apparently the Speedtouch Be/O2 boxes suck donkey balls with heavy duty wifi, as do a lot of other consumer-level APs.

[brammers]

Yes - there's quite a few other networks in the building. Could the signals be interfering? Should I swap to a different channel?

I'm aware that the box is going to be as cheap as possible, but I wouldn't really class my usage as heavy... Right now for example there's only 2 computers connected and both are only doing some pretty standard internet browsing, but the connection still sucks. The broadband speed sucks, which is understandable on a Sunday night in a city, but so does the actual wireless connection itself - which shouldn't be the case.

Thanks!