help me reach the promised land of fios...

so- i live in a lockout apt. and share a bathroom and kitchen with my landlord and another guy with a smaller room than mine. with that comes the perk of cable since i'm considered part of the same apt.

anyway, my landlord got fios and it blows doors off my crappy dsl and he's got no problem with me tapping in. the problem is that his modem is about 150ft away from my computer and there's 2 thick walls and a staircase/hallway between my computer and his router. i have a decent dual antenna wirelless card installed on my desktop, but so far the best i can get is a real squirrelly one or 2 bars and also even with the wep password the router isn't totally letting me through.

so my 2 pronged question is..

1) is there a "bridge" or extender kind of thing i can buy and get the range i need to use the fios or do i just need to buy a better router? (any links of examples would be awesome for what i should look out for).

2) what kind of port and firewall things do i need to check to get everything copacetic with the two computers/router in settings? i'm in IT and know a lot of basics but i'm a little hazy on this kind of networking.

thanks for any feedback.

 

Crappy DSL, yer killing me. I would love to have DSL
Try living out in the sticks where it's satellite or dial-up.
FIOS is a pipe dream out here. My telephone service is at the level of two tin cans connected with a string.

 

haha, well, it's not even one 1mbp, my dsl... and fios is 25mbp's up and down

 

This comes to mind: http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=533

Or this type of thing. Using the house electrical wiring seems like a neat workaround to running cables.

 

We tried to use these in our house.....slowed everything down to the point it reminded me on dial-up! It might be our wiring as it was installed when electricity first came to our area and our house was wired up by plumbers! Its a bit of a spaghetti mess. However I gave the kit to a friend to hook up his PC in his garage and he has found it too slow to stream music.

Is it possible to run yourself a network cable??

 

On the page was this link: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/improving-wireless-connection.htm

At my house, I ended up buying a wireless N router (Dlink DIR 655) that acted as a bridge. It connects to the landlord's Bell Sympatico router via gigabit ethernet. I disabled the wireless on the landlords router as he only used ethernet for his use. I ran the wire so that my wireless router was close to my computers and put heavy protection on it, including hidden SSID, WPA2 security and MAC filtering.
When the landlord's daughter came to visit, I gave her the info so she could connect to my router. Wireless N has a long range and high speed. We also use it with the iPad out by the pool.

 

Wasn't aware of the speed problems with the electrical wire network... I haven't tried it either, but have been considering it for a while.

 

this sounds like a good idea, especially since i might as well get a whole router for the same price as one of the bridges if i can find a good deal on a N router.

 

Security for wireless networks is often overlooked. Just FYI hiding SSID isn't effective, it basically lessens the chances that someone connects unintentionally. Even my phone has an WiFi scanning application that will pick up "hidden" networks if there is any traffic.
But WPA2 and MAC filtering should be enough.
Yours
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