wireless connection

I have recently moved to Sky and so far I am very pleased with their service, consistant speeds whatever time of the day. The only problem I have is with my wife's laptop. She uses this via a wireless connection in the lounge, the other end of the house from my office. In the past with my Netgear router this was never a problem, but since I have been with Sky using their Sagem router my wife's laptop keeps dropping speed then disconnects. After a while it reconnects then after a few more minutes it disconnects again, making the connection useless. Clearly the sky router is not as strong as the old Netgear, but I understand that I have to stick with the Sagem router.
In order to rectify the position I have been reading about range extenders. My question is do the Belkin or Hawkin range extenders work with the Sky supplied Sagem router and if so are they any good? Looking forward to your replies.

Thanks

In reply to a post by west2003:

but I understand that I have to stick with the Sagem router.

You don't have to, you could replace it with the netgear quite easily. Alternatively, use the netgear as a wireless access point hanging off the Sky router.

Sky's T&C require you to use the given router, however there are no recorded cases of people being disconnected for using other routers. http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/ is a very helpful website dealing specifically with sky broadband (which is why this forum is quiet) - over there they have whole forums devoted to using non-sky routers

That's right - I've not used the Sky-supplied router since I started with Sky over 18 months ago (well, I did switch it on for 5 minutes to extract the password). I still keep it just in case I ever have line problems.

Maybe a silly question but I assume you have tried changing the channel on the wireless of the router to see if it is stronger?

Thanks ian72. I have tried different channels but althouth there are slight variations they make no significant improvements.

Thanks Bat Boy, but what do you mean by "use the netgear as a wireless access point hanging of the Sky router"

So what you are saying that although it is against Sky's T & C , they will turn a blind eye if I use another router. I will have a look at the sky users forum over the weekend and might give my netgear a try. I assume that there is info about extracting the set up details from the sky router on the sky forums.

Thanks

What channel is your router set at on wireless? I had mine set to auto and the connection on my ipod touch, nintendo wii and my girlfriends laptop was shocking. I would be standing in the same room as the router with my ipod touch and the connection would drop out etc..

Then I changed it to wireless channel 11 and I've never had a problem since.

Hello Phatron

I have tried all the channels on my Sky router and would agree that 11 is as good as any, but still causes problems.

I wish someone would tell me how to set up my old router as a wireless access point.