Printing this guide is recommended so that it is more easily available during troubleshooting.
Basic Troubleshooting
Reducing Obstructions in the Wireless Path
Imagine a straight line between your two wireless components, every object that exists between them will likely degrade your wireless performance. If you’ve hidden your wireless access point or router behind a potted plant so that it will look nicer, that’s going to affect on performance. If the antenna on your Media Center Extender is placed in the back of a crowded A/V rack, and the access point it communicates with is located somewhere in house that caused the signal to go through the other A/V components, that’s going to drastically affect performance.
Think if there are relatively small and easy changes you can make to the position of your wireless components or other household items which will minimize the number of obstructions the wireless signal must travel through. Metal obstructions including mirrors are particularly important to remove from the path if possible. Use the Automatic Test or the Bandwidth Monitor to see the effects of changes.
Changing Location or Orientation of Wireless Components
Even with no change to the number of obstructions in the wireless path, seemingly insignificant changes to wireless networking components can cause meaningful changes to the performance.
Try moving your components to higher or lower elevations if possible, also try rotating them 45 or 90 degrees from how they normally sit. For example, if your wireless access point or router is on the first floor of your house and your Media Center Extender is on the second floor, try putting the wireless access point or router up on a shelf. Use the Automatic Test or the Bandwidth Monitor to see the effects of changes.
Modifying Antenna Positioning
The small antennas used in wireless networking devices are extremely sensitive to relatively minor changes in orientation and position. A good analogy to consider is “rabbit ears” antennas which were once widely used for TV reception, an inch one way or the other and TV reception could suffer significantly but there might be one small spot where reception came in fairly good, the same is true for wireless networking antennas.