A geek in need is a geek indeed.

OK, so, here's the deal: I'm renting a room in a house, and internet access is provided. Specifically, the landlord has a wireless network up that gets us into a cable modem, and it works well enough. Unfortunately, the wireless router is on the opposite side of the house from me, so my signal is kind of weak, and sometimes vanishes completely.

Because of this, I've taken upon myself to add in another wireless access point, closer to my computer, to hopefully improve my signal (I can factor the price of said access point into my rent payment, so it's not terribly burdensome, financially). The problem is, I can't seem to get it to work right.

The router itself has an SSID of networkname, no wpa or wep encryption (like I said, not my network), and runs on channel 11. I set up my access point (effectively a wireless hub according to the troubleshooting docs) with an SSID of networkname, no encryption, and channel 1 to avoid interference. I'm not *sure* this is how it should be set up, I've never done it before myself and (aside from the bit about channels and interference) the docs don't offer much help.

The trouble is... Well, without my access point plugged it, I have a weak signal talk to the router normally. As soon as I plug in the access point, though, the signal jumps up two bars but I stop hearing anyone else! I was listening on Wireshark and as soon as the access point goes up the only thing I see are the packets I'm trying to send. Obviously, without hearing anyone else the signal strength doesn't mean much.

So, can anyone out there give me a hand? I'm not sure what the problem could be.