Can you hear me now?.....

So I am now in North Carolina and I have some time to catch up on the blog. First though, I have to solve the problem of internet connectivity. My Mom no longer lives at her house and my brother canceled her cable service to save money. The result is that I'm pretty much stuck at her house with my iPhone as my only connection to the outside world.

My brother lives right next door and has a Netgear Router/Switch in his house that he installed so that he could connect multiple computers in hard wired fashion to the internet. It just happens to have a wireless interface that he doesn't use because none of his computers even have wireless capability. The last time I was here in May, I borrowed my nephew's laptop which has a wireless interface to test the range of the wireless network in my brother's house.

I was able to get a tenuous connection from Mom's house, but only outside on the back porch. If I moved into the house, I would lose the connection. That sorta worked, but there are two serious problems. One: in the mornings the back porch of her house gets direct and intense sunlight (if the sun is out) making it very difficult to see the LCD screen on a laptop and Two: the weather in North Carolina is not always conducive to working on the back porch.

Before I left San Diego, I ordered an additional Netgear wireless access point called a RangeMax Wireless Network Extender that supposedly extends the range of a wireless network 10x-15x. After about 2 hours on the tech support line, I finally got the thing working right and it is now on the end of a 30 foot ethernet cable and sitting on the window sill of the only window in my brother's house that faces my Mom's house. The signal strength is definitely better, but there is no way that it is 10x-15x.

I now have a much stronger signal on the back porch and there are two places in the house that I can get and maintain a connection. One is in the laundry room which has a window facing my brother's house and the other is a bedroom which has a window facing my brother's house. In both cases, the signal is weak compared to being outside on the back porch, but it will work. I am typing in this post from the laundry room.

If Laurence is following these posts and has any suggestions, I would appreciate hearing them.