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[Cottony]

Wireless signal strength is very poor (D-link have nice marketing "Ultimate Range and coverage performance").
I have 2 floors house (concrete/brick) and router can just cover 1st floor with 50...80% signal strength (shown by DIR-655). I also changed one antenna (the middle one) to 9dBi stick, but not much help.

Is there any know issues with the A4 and/or 1.21 fw?
Any good hints how to solve?

[MitchSchaft]

Known issues are if your PC is too far away with lots of walls in the way, the signal will be weaker. You didn't even tell us what your PCs setups are.

[Cottony]

I have old PC with XP at the 2nd floor and with D-Link DWA-130 USB stick and it can only sometime find the router with <30% signal strength.

Another PC is wired to router (Vista 64b) and it works fine.

[julyderek]

Wireless signal strength is very poor (D-link have nice marketing "Ultimate Range and coverage performance").

I am too very disappointed with this router.  My WRT54G which was 5 times cheaper was as good as this one.  I see NO difference in signal strength or speed.  When I am sitting 15 feet away with one wall inbetween, it is showing 30 % signal strength. On firmware 1.32NA.

[EddieZ]

I am too very disappointed with this router.  My WRT54G which was 5 times cheaper was as good as this one.  I see NO difference in signal strength or speed.  When I am sitting 15 feet away with one wall inbetween, it is showing 30 % signal strength. On firmware 1.32NA.

Basically the same restrictions from nature apply to all wireless signals. The signal power is not the difference with routers (they all use the max allowed). The strength of the DIR655 is the way it combines two radios and the three antenna's. You might want to fiddle with those, and with the wireless channel (find the best channel manually).

[julyderek]

Basically the same restrictions from nature apply to all wireless signals. The signal power is not the difference with routers (they all use the max allowed). The strength of the DIR655 is the way it combines two radios and the three antenna's. You might want to fiddle with those, and with the wireless channel (find the best channel manually).

I did that.  Am on the best manual channel.  If my Laptop doesn't get a signal when I am 30 feet away and the same used to happen with my WRT54G, I wonder whats so great about this DIR-655 router.

[Cottony]

Is there any comparison test available in web about wireless router signal strength in practical houses. (so has somebody try-ed few brand in same house with fixed locations of PC to compare routers)?

[davevt31]

July - If your laptop had a poor signal with both routers, I would start looking at the settings on the laptop first instead of blaming the router.  What is your adapter that you are using? 

[basementjack]

I would also suggest looking for sources of radio interference on the 2.4 ghz band.
if you own a home, start by unplugging your cordless phone and pull the batteries from the handsets.
See if that improves things.

[dblagent]

I would blame the wireless adapters way before the router.  I currently have a Netgear WPN111 usb adapter on my desktop and it is only getting three bars and I'm upstairs in the room directly over the router.  Literally less than 20 feet from the router.  I had a Belkin usb adapter (I usually hate belkins stuff) and it will get five bars sitting at the same usb plug as the Netgear on my desktop.  Not a thing changing other than the adapter in this case.

I have hooked literally thousands of wireless networks and seen the differences in how computers connect  to the same router.  Amazing the difference that the interanl card in notebooks make, and in some cases the same cards in different laptops work really different (I guess the internal antennas are vastly different) and drivers can make a big difference too.  Normally the router is fine, check the adapters being used.  Also, if possible always use a USB adapter as I find better signal on these over internal cards by far 95% of the time.

PS - the wpn111 is a horrible adapter, never get one lol.  Overheats and locks up and makes me lag in games, the belkin works perfectly.

[Techgee]

Was getting sub-G downlink speeds with a WLAN 1510 (802.11 a,b,g,n mini-card) in my Dell Mini 10v netbook, even at 10 feet.  While diagnosing it with the DIR-655 and netbook 10 feet apart the link speed (on the router's Wireless Status page) suddenly jumped and pegged at 270!  What?  Looked at the netbook and the display was in power save mode.  It seems the LCD display was causing interference with the wireless.

Wasn't anything wrong with the DIR-655....

[Techgee]

Is there any comparison test available in web about wireless router signal strength in practical houses. (so has somebody try-ed few brand in same house with fixed locations of PC to compare routers)?

Like this for the DIR-655 A4 and 2 other routers?  House layout used (including location of router and 6 wireless clients) here.  I believe SmallNetBuilder has more of these kinds of tests comparing routers.

The tests are a good way to set ones expectation for "normal" wireless speeds at various distances in a real house.  YMMV.