Patient genius needed...

[dpro]

Hi. I'm trying to extend the WLAN in my friends' rambling old stone house. I bought a Hawking Extender and put it upstairs; it receives full connection and "excellent" signal but wouldn't connect to the web until I tweaked a few settings like giving it a static IP... Trouble is, despite excellent everything, the loading of pages varies from OK-ish to slooooowww, to let's-make-a-cup-of-tea-and-wait; going straight to the web via the router (BTOfficeHub) in the room housing the router is lightning fast. Should I poke around in the router settings and make it use OpenDNS, or is my issue nothing to do with DNS?? Any help much appreciated.
Thanks
dp