I have 2 laptops, a printer, an ipad, an xbox, a sonos stereo with 5 rooms and 3 iphones all running off the wifi in a 3 storey house so on the top floor the connection is sometimes sketchy and I’m getting ip conflict warnings all the time.

I’m not tech savvy so don’t know if I need to replace my cheap old g router and/or if replacing it with this would be taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

http://www.netgear.co.uk/home/products/wirelessrouters/ultimate-performance/WNDR4500.aspx#two

Help greatly appreciated.

IP conflicts is just something up with how you’re allocating IP addresses, I’d guess the router is doing DHCP but you’ve also given at least one device a static IP address in the DHCP scope range (which basically means the router will issue out that IP address thinking it’s free but it’s not).
I like Netgear routers for home use but don’t have any experience with the wifi-boost technology that model has, the datasheet mentions it has high power radio amps though to achieve this so whilst would almost certainly give you a better signal upstairs than a bog standard router it wouldn’t be guaranteed to give you a decent signal, it’s whether you buy one and try it or look at something like powerline Ethernet to sort the issue with your upstairs out and then if you sort the IP addressing out you won’t need a new router.

I think that is the same one we have at home. It doesn’t provide any better coverage than the £20 we also run. You’re probably best off running another WAP on the edge of your WiFi to give you better coverage.

Before you go buying anything, check to see if anyone elses WiFi is interfering with yours (neighbours WiFi running on same channels). If using a laptop download netstumbler to search for WiFi, there are also apps for tabs/phones.

As FW said though, the address conflict isn’t a router issue. You need to resolve that first.

The router has a pool of addresses it knows it can allocate (called a ‘scope’); typically, this might be 192.168.0.2 > 192.168.0.254. If you program something with a static IP address in this range, eg you set your Sonos box or printer manually to be 192.168.0.5, the router doesn’t know this already exists and so will allocate the same address. Two devices with the same address = IP conflict.

To fix it, you first need to find it. Then, either set the static device to use DHCP (ie, to get its address from the router), or if you must manually configure the device then it needs excluding from the scope. To do this, either add the address as an exclusion, or reduce the size of the scope so that eg your scope runs 192.168.0.2 > 192.168.0.100 and then you assign manual addresses from .101 upwards.

Hope that makes sense (-:

ASUS routers provide decent performance, much better than my lynksys router however as good as it is is wont cover all areas with decent useability and even if it does work with one device conected, the second you have a few mre devices in different areas connected signal and performnce starts to vary. your better off with ethernet over power, especially for a nas or an xbox. i can stream hd from my server no problems now, something which is not possible on wireless in perfect conditions

There seem to be varying reviews of EOP so i’m concerned that it may not be the solution.

Is it effective?

Keep yer cheap router and use powerline networking for upstairs

see here I use the solwise 200megathingies per second ones and they’re loads faster than my wireless

(edit – like wot dobo said)

Power line plug for each floor which feeds a wireless access point? Or just a wireless access point for each floor?

bigyinn – depends whether you want wifi well away from the original router or not

I have mostly static devices plugged straight into the mains newtworking but also a 2nd old router plugged into one right upstairs (loft) for phones etc to get a good signal

Sorry for slight hijack but I’m interested in these EOP thingies.

So can I use a spare wireless router elsewhere in the house if it’s plugged into one of these and, if so, is it a simple plug & play?

I can’t remember how I did it, but I’m a dunce and it went easily

2nd router is on a different SSID and password in my case – helps me control my kids’ wifi access as they only have 1 password – but I think I could have used it as a repater or whatevva if I’d wanted

Hi thered – first of all, do you have cable or adsl? This Is a cable router. If you are adsl, look at the DGNDxxxx routers. DGND3700 is good for adsl.

The new N standard is faster and you should get better distance and throughput than your old G router.

Look at going Dual band (2.4 and 5 ghz frequency) and then put some devices you have on 2.4 and others at 5ghz (2.4ghz is very congested).

Power line is great to extend your network upstairs but it won’t be wireless and you’ll need to make sure upstairs is on the same ring main.

Have a look at wireless repeaters/range extenders in the upstairs rooms – the plug into your plugs and link up with the router http://www.netgear.co.uk/home/products/wireless-range-extenders/WN3000RP.aspx

Keep it netgear – they pay my wages!