Signal strength problems

[Addict]

I had my new Superhub fitted last week on 50Mb service. When connected by the ethernet cable I have no problems but when using wireless the signal strength is very poor especially if I move downstairs (the superhub is upstairs). I have checked the settings as suggested on this forum for things like flood etc. & see that the Virgin installer had disabled all the things that are recommended here. I checked the voltage of my power supply and low and behold the installer had used my old 10v unit so a phone call to the local installations manager (the installer gave me his number in case of problems) and the correct power adaptor was delivered. However, even after fitting the correct power supply the signal strength did not improve.
What I have done which seems to have solved the problem was to disable the wifi on the super hub, plug my old Belkin N1 router into one of the ethernet ports and use the Belkins wireless capabilities.
My question is that I see other people have used this method successfully before but some of them mention things like setting DMZ or bridging or something similar, should I have done this and if so what does it mean and how do I do it? If you can offer some suggestions, please do so in simple terms as I am a beginner to all of this and I am really struggling with all the terminology.

[zekeisaszekedoes]

You can plug another router of almost any kind into the superhub, just make sure one has DHCP disabled and make sure they don't have the same IP address: usually the router doing the DHCP and with a xxx.xxx.xxx.1 address should be whichever is considered the "main" one, which in this case is the superhub.

[Sephiroth]

Perhaps this addition to advice received will also help:

ATTACH A ROUTER TO A VM HUB

• Plug your cable router’s WAN port into any of the LAN ports on the Hub.

• Plug your PC into any Hub LAN port and access the management page. 192.168.0.1

• On the LAN IP page (in Advanced) examine the DHCP lease info; you should see your PC and the second router. Note the MAC address of the (second) router and add it to the DHCP reservation section and give the second router an IP address of say 192.168.0.10. (Use ipconfig/all in a cmd window to find the MAC address of your PC if your not sure which is which.)

• Now go to the DMZ host page (in Advanced) on the Hub and enter the same IP address (e.g. 192.168.0.10). This means that the Hub will pass all traffic to the second router without any checks or filters. The second router will be in the same subnet as the router side of the Hub.

• Turn off the second router and back on again, plug your PC into the second router, login and you're ready

• Don't forget to disable wireless on the Hub and use the wireless on the second router. Actually you don't have to do this. You can have the Hub offeing, say 5 GHz on one SSID and the other router offering 2.4 GHz on another SSID. That could be quite useful.

• You should also turn the firewall off on the Hub and disable the IP Flood Detection facility. By the way, you now have the use of the ethernet ports on both routers.

Hope that helps

[Addict]

Thanks to you both for the advice, I'll try that when I get home tonight.
One question that I have though is that when I first connected my Belkin router I just plugged it in and switched the wireless off on the superhub and enabled it on the Belkin and everything worked. If I do what you suggest will my speed increase because the hub is passing all traffic to the router without checks or are there any other advantages?
Sorry to ask what are probably quite basic questions but I'm struggling to get my head round all of this and with all the hassle that I had with Virgin Media while trying to upgrade my package I really don't feel like spending another few hours on the phone to them when the advice you can get here is far superior.

[kwikbreaks]

The most likely reason it worked is that the Belkin operates by default on a different subnet from the hub. The hub defaults to 192.168.0. range but it is more common in my own experience for home routers to use 192.168.1. With that setup it will work just fine without disabling DHCP or putting it in the DMZ.

I doubt you'll see any difference in speeds whichever way you set it up.

Doing it properly (per Seph) does mean that you can connect compters to any free port and they will all be on the same network. With different subnets devices connected to one router would not be able to communicate over the LAN with device on the other one.

[zekeisaszekedoes]

Absolutely: you want everything on the subnet and within the same IP range where possible, makes things easier and no wondering why a device on one router can't see any devices on the other. Seph's way is spot-on, so I'd do that.

If you really need lots of devices (i.e. more than seven wired) then you might want to look into a 16-port switch or something like that, rather than daisy-chaining a handful of routers together.