Wireless Woes

Damn, this is frustrating. One of the reasons for moving to London, I must admit, was for broadband (which doesn't exist in South Africa, and the closest alternatives are ridiculously expensive).

So for the first week I was here, I was staying at a friend's place, and it was great.

Then I moved into my own place (own = room in shared flat, but that's irrelevant for now), and for the last two weeks the only internet access I've had is at the local internet cafe where I'd check my email quickly for news from my agents. This was because the landlord was going to get broadband set up in the flat, with a wireless router so that I could connect using my laptop in my room. It almost got done last Saturday, but they didn't have time, which was pretty disappointing. Eventually it got set up yesterday, which was pretty exciting.

Except.

It works fine in the lounge, where the router is. But in my room, which is only a couple of meters down a passage, nothing. Signal strength varies from moment to moment, from 0% up to 50%. There's one spot where it's fairly reliable, but that spot is about 1.4m high, so it's not exactly convenient. Putting my desk in that spot lowers the laptop by about, I dunno, 60cm, and loses the connection. I've tried moving the aerial around, moving the router from one end of the table it's sitting on to the other end, at that's about the best I can get. Even that good spot is only about 70% reliable, so it's almost more frustrating than it not working at all (almost being the keyword, there).

It's ridiculous, but my old GPRS connection back in SA was actually better than this (well, in that it worked everywhere; in that it was slow and expensive, it was definitely worse).

I suspect that putting the router higher up might help - I tried putting it on a stack of phone books, but that didn't work. Some on myadsl suggest putting a mirror behind the aerial/antenna (what is the proper term, actually?), or using a pringles tube to essentially focus the signal in the required direction, but the latter at least isn't particularly aesthetic. A mirror might be better, but again, given that it's a shared flat the other people might not really be happy with having an arbitrary mirror on the dining room table behind the router!

So I dunno. I've got to do something, but I don't know what. (Well - I need to get my own flat, even if it's just a teeny one. I've only been sharing for 2 weeks, and it's really not bad, and I'm sure it could be a lot worse, and at first it was a little bit less lonely to have other people around - but I'm used to having my own place, where I can do what I like. I want that again! Once I'm settled at work I'll look into it - I'm only a 6 month lease, with a 3 month minimum stay, so it's not too bad. But I digress).

Any suggestions or ideas? Anything I can do on the receiving end?