How to position your wireless router

Here's a handy set of tips about where to place your wireless router, and where not to:

• Find a place that's closest to the middle of all of your networked devices.
• Keep it high and away from walls, furniture, cabinets and shelving.
• Don't compete with appliances that emit interfering radio signals.
• Avoid reflective surfaces that may cause wireless signals to bounce off.

In other words, don't do what I have been doing until very recently: wondering why I got a weak or patchy signal on my laptop while I was positioned a room away from the router (which was on the floor under a desk), with a large mirror on one side of the wall between me and it, and a packed bookshelf on the other side of that wall.

I now see that the poor signal was the fault of neither the router nor my laptop's Centrino innards. Instead it was more like operator error. Sigh. (At least I didn't have it near any 'competing appliances' emitting errant radio signals!)

[Tips Source: Dell Small Business Edge]