wireless network link quality & signal strength issues

pencil

Hi all,

I have a wireless network installed & is almost going swimmingly execpt for a VERY intermittant signal between the Hub & (stationary!) card PCI. Sometimes the signal strenght & quality is okay & other random times there is no signal (& hence no interweb - aaaahhhhhh).

Note: that neither the sending or recieving device moves an inch & they are at max 5 meters away from each other (1 floor below).

The wireless router is the - SMC Barricade Wireless G 54 Mbps 802.11g,WPA, 4P switch, USB print server and I have the wireless PCI card from the same maker to match.

Any ideas on what I can do to improve the signal? (I've tried moving the aerials in every direction)

Stephen

Is someone using a microwave nearby? This will totally kill your wifi connection. I have the same wireless router (minus the print server), and I get some pretty decent range from it with a netgear PCMCIA card.

What make and model is the card?

pencil

hey

The card is the SMC EZ Connect G Wireless PCI 54Mbps 802.11g

There is a microwave in the house but its a good bit away from both devices.

What sort of range are you getting with yours? At the moment mine is pretty useless

pencil

Has anyone any experiance in adding/extending the antenna - will this help?

liamo

In addition, some cordless phone operate in the same frequency range and can cause interference.

Regards,

Liam

naitkris

looks like my wireless network (when i get it) will be having some problems as well...

getting the same wireless router that pencil has, but different wireless NICs however, yet i also have 2 wireless phones and a microwave in between one of the machines and the router. on top of this there are 4 walls (all made of wood however) in between as well.

anyone have a wireless network and in the same situation (or similar) as myself?

liamo

Hi Naitkris,

You may be ok. Just because you have a micro and cordless phones doesn't mean that you'll have problems. My wireless network works just fine and I have both a micro and a cordless phone.

What would concern me more is the number of walls that you've mentioned. You may want to borrow a couple of wireless cards (and/or laptops) and check the signal strength between the two devices in various locations before you shell out on equipment.

Regards,

Liam

seanos

I may be one of lucky ones, however, I can access wireless AP anywhere in house [and out] - which means going through 2-4 walls [by no means thin walls either].
That's by using D-Link AP [gets very hot ? ;/], and Intel miniPCI Wireless card w/ internal antenna

Stephen

Bear in mind the microwave will only affect the wlan when someone's actually cooking something in it. I don't have a cordless phone but I do have a wireless TV sender that works in the 2.4ghz band - it has no ill effects on the wlan, but the wlan does cause serious interference on it, no matter what channels each of them uses.

pencil

We have a 'Siemens Gigaset 2010' cordless phone here - guess what - it operates in the 2.4Ghz range and I've already crushed up & binned the box for the router - ahhhhhhh!

I have yet to unplug the phone to see if it improves - can't do at the moment - phone line is critical.

We be doing later - let you kow how I get on.

netman

Are you using Windows XP on the laptop/PC?

If so, your problems might be software related.
There's a known issue with XP dropping connection every so often.

Have a look on google, I saw the issue described on www.overclockers.com

pencil

sh!t, yeah - I'm using XP pro.

Cheers, will look into it.

Velcrow

Yes, another SMC Barricade user that has experienced less that perfect results

Make sure you have the latest drivers ...blah blah as then visit this forum - it was a great help to me in sorting out a similar problem

http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/smc


The PCI smc 54 card never preformed well, I have a 11b laptop that gets better results from the router!!

naitkris

liamo wrote:

What would concern me more is the number of walls that you've mentioned. You may want to borrow a couple of wireless cards (and/or laptops) and check the signal strength between the two devices in various locations before you shell out on equipment.

thanks for the reply.

well, all the walls are out of wood which i've read is better than concrete for wireless signals passing through...

i think i will be ok for the walls, but the microwave is on the ground floor along with the router while the machine is on the floor above and it would worry me if someone was to start cooking while i am doing something important online or over the wireless network.

surely the micro "waves" can't interfere with the signal. as far as i know, wireless phones use a similar radio transmission to WLANs and i've never had bad interference walking around with the microwave on and in between the wireless phone and the phones' base.

Stephen

Well, in my situation whenever anyone uses the microwave, the wlan is completely dead for the duration.

parsi

I have a Linksys WAG54g , a Dect Phone (siemens) and a video sender.. none of them interefere with the WAG - it had wireless problems which were resolved by firmware but during the problems unplugging all my other wireless devices made no difference whatsoever.. I also don't suffer from interference on the video sender (the microwave does that).

pencil

Well I have the Siemens Gigaset 2010 unpluged and the signal is just as poor.

I have been told that there is 15inchs of concrete between me & the router :-(

seamus

pencil wrote:

Well I have the Siemens Gigaset 2010 unpluged and the signal is just as poor.

I have been told that there is 15inchs of concrete between me & the router :-(

That'll make a difference alright.
I'm not sure of the feasibility of this, but can you drill a 15" long hole through the concrete, and embed a receiver in there, just barely sticking out the other side?

pencil

Seamus a suggestion of genius proportions ;-)

Feck'um all - I just ran a network cable to the router - problem solved - we have interweb again.