Troubleshooting Wifi Signal Strength, why is my home connection so weak? Options

[Jon_J]

I have noticed some connection problems lately and decided to check my connection versus an open AP near my house.
I decided to use the Sharp/Cacko Wireless monitor app, since it's referred to a lot in this subforum.
When I connect to my router, I get a very weak signal, as shown in first pic.
Frst pic shows:
------------------------
Channel -1 Speed 2
Signal 3 - 2%
Noise 27 - 26%
Quality 0
------------------------
When I connect to an open access point, (I'm not sure where it comes from, but is not my access point)
Second pic shows:
------------------------
Channel 6 Speed 2
Signal 26 - 25%
Noise 22 - 21%
Quality 3
------------------------
Edit
Added iwconfig. I edited the "Access Point" numbers.
My Home AP

CODE

wlan0     IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:"home-p4"  Nickname:"zaurus"
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx   Bit Rate:2 Mb/s  
          Sensitivity=1/3  
          Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=0/70  Signal level=-100 dBm  Noise level=-78 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:41   Missed beacon:0

Open AP

CODE

wlan0     IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:"linksys"  Nickname:"zaurus"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx  
          Bit Rate:1 Mb/s   Sensitivity=1/3  
          Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=1/70  Signal level=-79 dBm  Noise level=-81 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:9  Invalid misc:47   Missed beacon:0

I have my Linksys router setup with WPA personal PSK, set to 'b" only
All the settings on the advanced wireless page are set to default.
One other thing I noticed is that my ESSID doesn't show in the "Network monitor". Is that because I'm using WPA?

This post has been edited by Jon_J: Oct 21 2007, 04:45 PM