This can't be normal behavior (wireless router)

Mutant_Fruit

Basically, if anything comes between me and the router, be it a person (especially a person), or a wooden door, i get serious packet loss and the occasional really high pings (in the 6000's and more).

Is this normal, or is it a dodgy router. Its a Linksys WRT54g. I find it hard to believe that the only way to get a good signal out of it is to have a direct line of sight between my laptop and it.

snappieT

Thats screwed up. Are the people wearing lead jackets?

Try changing the channel on the router. Your microwave or cordless phone could be interfering with the signal, thus rendering anything other than a direct line of sight impossible

Mutant_Fruit

i;ve tried pretty much every channel. Its really wierd. Unfortunately i don't know how to check what interference is coming in on the signal. According to the intel wireless advanced stats, the RSSI is -40dBm (ish). I take it thats a good thing?

But, i will change the channel... again. From 1 to 13 i suppose :P

EDIT: I take it this is definately unusual behaviour then?

WizZard

Yup. My wireless router allows reception through up to three thick solid walls and three floors. (Admittedly it's weak then but usable for the internet at least)

What about trying a diff wifi card in the laptop?

Mutant_Fruit

well, i can get a signal. But every now and again it will go mad. It makes playing lan games next to impossible at times, as it could lag badly for up to 45 seconds, and then its back to normal.

At first i thought it was just because i was using bittorrent and suchlike, and that was killing the router, but after extensive testing, its definately not bittorrents fault.

I'm really tempted to RMA it and get another one to see if that helps. I'm also emailing linksys about it. It might be a damaged transmitter/reciever in the router. Mightn't be getting the power it needs to work properly, but once again, i have no way of checking

EDIT: The wifi is built in, its centrino. So i don't think i can try another one. Afaik it works fine in college, but i don't have another router i can test the laptop on

Random

Definitly sounds with a problem with the router or card and not your surroundings.

Try another card as suggested above and if no luck with that, see if you can exchange the router.

Better still, can you borrow one off a friend to try out for a day or two? (just on the SLIM chance that something is affecting it all).


You don't have your router under a desk or anything ?

deckie27

DO you have a Digital video sender thing?
The yoke u would us to send sky or a dvd into another room
They can cause savage interference

As found out with my wrt54g I boght a few weeks ago

Smellyirishman

I have an identical problem, with the exact same router. Although I don't think it is interferrence, because I have put two of these routers side by side and still had the 30seconds of lag every 2 minutes on a LAN game problem.

I do not really get it when sending files or anything, just when playing LAN games, have yet to figure it out.

NotMe

Yeah it's definately not normal. I have the same router under a desk in the sitting room and I'm in my bedroom with 2 plasterboard walls and 1 concrete wall in between and I get a "very good" signal.

Mutant_Fruit

well, for those of you with the same router, would ye be able to ping it for me (preferably over a long space of time) and paste me the results of it. I'm using ping plotter at the moment to get a good view of what happens to packetloss/ping as i do various things. But a standard dos ping would do ok.

i'm looking for the average ping from your wireless device to the router. Mine is generally 1-2 ms, but then it goes mad and goes up to the 1000's. packetloss figues would be nice aswell. i just want to make absolutely sure that ye are getting no loss/high pings that ya havn't noticed yet.

rsynnott

snapscan1212p wrote:

Thats screwed up. Are the people wearing lead jackets?

Try changing the channel on the router. Your microwave or cordless phone could be interfering with the signal, thus rendering anything other than a direct line of sight impossible

Oddly, a person (particularly a fat person) may absorb more microwaves than the lead... WiFi operates in much the same range as a microwave oven, that is, the range that excites water molecules. Where signal is marginal, people walking in front of equipment will indeed disrupt it (this is very noticible in TCD arts block when lectures end).

Hobbes

Another thing to check is if you have a neighbour using the same channel.

I dumped that router and got myself a 3com as I would also have problems with it.

deckie27

Hobbes wrote:

I dumped that router and got myself a 3com as I would also have problems with it.

You dumped a Cisco for 3com. Strange

Hobbes

No I dumped the Linksys router for a 3com one. The same one as the original posters.

- The range wasn't great for what I wanted.
- Games ran fine until someone else switched on a webcam and they sucked up all the bandwidth.
- I couldn't get my companies tunnelling software to work with it.

Mutant_Fruit

I have no digital video sender, my wireless phone is off with the plugs and batteries removed.

The only way to get decent performance from the router seems to be when i sit with a direct line of sight to it. Then the ping NEVER goes about 3ms, zero packet loss. However, once i lose the line of sight, even if its a wooden door (with a cutout in it so that just over 1/2 of it is glass), the signal goes to crap.

Now, do i return it and get another one of the same kind, or is it going to be presistant problem with all WRT54G's? If it is, what other brands are recommended.

NotMe

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

well, for those of you with the same router, would ye be able to ping it for me (preferably over a long space of time) and paste me the results of it. I'm using ping plotter at the moment to get a good view of what happens to packetloss/ping as i do various things. But a standard dos ping would do ok.

i'm looking for the average ping from your wireless device to the router. Mine is generally 1-2 ms, but then it goes mad and goes up to the 1000's. packetloss figues would be nice aswell. i just want to make absolutely sure that ye are getting no loss/high pings that ya havn't noticed yet.

Maximum: 4ms Average: 1ms
119 packets sent: 119 packets received

I have a WRT54G router. See my previous post about where my laptop is in relation to the router.

Mutant_Fruit

Right, looks like i somehow got a dodgy router. So i'm gonna get a replacement and see if that works. If i have problems with the replacement too, i'll be heading off to a different brand. Its not worth the hastle imo.

Mutant_Fruit

Well, before i packed off the router to be returned, i tried changing my drivers again... and amazingly it seems to have helped! I no longer get packetloss when i don't have a direct line of sight to the router. In fact, i'm one floor up, and through 2 walls at the moment, and its grand. Only problem is every 60 seconds theres a ping spike... but i can live with that i think

EDIT: I have an Intel 2200BG wireless card, and i'm now using the drivers known as "wireless 8.1.1.0 - generic tic 88663.exe". That seems to have sorted the problem... if it doesn't, ye'll all hear the explosion when i blow up the router

Lydesia

Sounds like a crap router then really, what encrypton have you got on? The higher it is usually drops the signal strength. I have the 3com and usb stick from komplett. Pretty neat thing, has 4 LAN ports too. I have it on 128 bit (28? number HEX coded) encrypton and it works about 60% signal strength on the computer down the hall. Through 2 walls. Thats ok

Mutant_Fruit

Like i said in my last post... it was dodgy drivers for the 2200BG wireless card.

The the occasional ping spike to 160ms to the router seems to be just a single packet, so that could be the laptop causing that problem, as the pings from the wired ports are a constant 1ms 24x7. I've never had a problem with the wired section.

Over the last half hour i've only lost 2 packets. Which is a damn good improvement.

And at the moment i'm running no encryption. I was quite happy with my mac address filtering until i could get the packetloss sorted out. Now its time to apply some WPA and suchlike. Not that i expect my 70year old neighbours to be able to hack my router if i leave the encryption off. I doubt they even know what packet sniffing is

Kali

Netstumbler is your friend in situations like this.

rsynnott

It's possible that the wifi card just doesn't get on with the router. That happens.