Wireless Signal direction in modem routers

Hi guys,

May be a silly question so apologies in advance. I live in a three storey house at the moment and am wondering whether the placement of my wireless router will affect signal strength around the house. I'm wondering whether having the wireless router on the top floor would affect any laptops connected wirelessly on the bottom floor?

I suppose what I'm asking is does the direction of wireless signal in a router just go upwards and outwards or does it also spread downwards aswell??

Many thanks

A lot will depend on the antenna(s) they can have directional, flat, hemispherical or spherical fields. I would be inclined to start on the middle floor and try the router flat on the floor, flat against wall and in both cases pointing front to back and then side to side. Experiment is the best way - unless you can get full 3-d polar plots of field strength.

depends on the router, but as a general rules the signal goes out in every direction in a straight line. You will need to play around to find where the best location is for you whole house.

Ah right thanks. My router is a BT Home Hub 2.0 and so doesn't have any physical antennas externally that I can point in different directions. I was also thinking of getting the Apple Airport Extreme Base station in the future and just wondered whether I could get away with putting it on the top floor in my office!

I have two wireless routers on top floor in loft, and reach ground floor with no issues. Older G based routers used to have problems, so N coverage does appear to be better. More thought in the antenna design in the laptops may help.

Alas it is try it and see, a modern house with concrete slab floors will be more of a problem than an old one with nice dry floor boards. Again a thermal insulation of foil under a carpet or in plasterboard will play merry hell with wireless signal.

e.g. to get DAB reception in loft and get no drop outs, an external antenna has had to be hidden in the eaves. You can see the foil backing on the plasterboard that lines the room from inside the eaves