Would a Wireless Travel Router Help????
 

Okay, so I'm stuck in this hotel in Nuremberg, Germany. The Wifi is free but has always been a little flakey (but free WiFi, along with good staff is why I stay at this 3* place). Anyway, I've just had my laptop upgraded to to SP2 and it deals with flakey WiFi networks differently. At the moment, my laptop is constantly connecting and disconnecting from various wireless routers within range inside the hotel. And this is with on of the hotel's Linksys routers a very short distance from my room.

Soooo, my question is: Will a battery powered portable router, perhaps placed high up near the door of the room help me get a more reliable connection?

Would any of Flyertalk's assembled tech experts like to recommned a device that might help me?

The actual connection to the Internet from my laptop isn't that bad. A SkypeOut call home was perfect for almost 10 minutes before breaking up. At the moment I'm having no problems Flyertalkin but every so often, the little red cross appears on my WiFi connection followed by it informing me that I'm connected at either high or low strength.

Regards
I

It sounds to me like you don't have the software set up correctly.
What brand is your computer, and what brand is your WiFi card in your laptop?
Are you using the software that came with the WiFi card to connect, or the WinXP software?

It's HP Compaq nc6000 with built in WiFi, using the software that comes with Windows XP SP2.

Regards
I

a router might help
 

so, a small wireless travel router with WDC like the SMC would possibly help, acting as a repeater for a slightly weaker signal.

But, if you settings are off, then you might not see much improvement. Does the laptop have a wireless connection software manager? that might be interfering with windows zero config wireless control? If that is the case, then a shut down of one of them might help.

I have had the same problems in hotels, usually due to bad configurations by the hotel themselves (routers on the same channel etc...).

Try this:

Go to your wireless network settings in XP (start > settings > network connections > double click on the wireless connection).

Click on properties and then on the "wireless networks" tab in the top.

You will see a list of all the routers in the hotel, click on the one you do NOT want to connect to, then click properties, now click on the "connection" tab and disable the "connect when in range" option.

That SHOULD let XP know it doesn't need to connect to that one.

Hmmm, I don't actually see multiple routers though it must be trying to connect to multiple routers because everytime it re-connects the signal strength is different. It couldn't something daft like all the routers having the same name (in this case, "default") could it?

That is very possible. I have seen several hotels do this, they just buy the routers, unpack them and plug them in...

I suspect you should be using the HP Network Assistant
http://h20239.www2.hp.com/techcenter...less_setup.htm
rather than Win XP to manage your connections.

Thanks. I'll give that a try. Oddly enough, my iPaq (complete with HP config tools) fares far better though it looks like we have a couple of none functional routers in the hotel just to confuse things (like the one just outside of my room).

Isn't that just for the initial setup? It doesn't look like a replacement for the Zero config tool XP has...

Well, setting it up such that I connect to the network manually as opposed to automatically when Windows XP boots up has improved matters a great deal.

I'm not an HP user so I can't say for certain, but on my IBM laptop I use the IBM network management software rather than the WinXP software and I find it much more convenient. Similarly, for anyone with (for example) a Linksys WiFi card, I would recommend using the Linksys software rather than WinXP.