ZTE router signal strength

[asarnow]

The Sonic supplied ZTE router I have seems to have a puny signal--getting "one bar" when trying to use my laptop in the bedroom, 30 feet from the router in the hall. Any way to help this?

[aw]

Have you checked to see if there are other hotspots on the same channel nearby? My father-in-law's ZTE was giving terrible signal too, and I saw that someone else's hotspot had a high signal strength on the same channel. Once I switched to an open channel everything got better. If you have a smartphone there are free apps to look at this (I use "Wifi Analyzer" on Android)

[wifi]

might help you find a vacant Wi-Fi channel - though it mostly cannot discover non-broadcasting SSIDs (unless your laptop can connect to that non-broadcasting SSID)
http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InSSIDer

some router firmware can also do a 'site survey' eg. Tomato, DD-WRT, etc and they can probably show the "non-broadcast SSID" ones too

[asarnow]

We ended up getting a new ZTE modem/router from Sonic, and the signal strength is much higher.

It was previously operating on a relatively open channel (none of them are totally clear in this area, due to the prolific AT&T 2Wire devices and their abysmal channel selection algorithm).