Poor WIFI Signal strength

[Richard]

hello All

I've just got round to installing my Belkin ADSL Modem/wireless router to replace my USB connected BT ADSL modem and I'm having problems with the wireless signal strength that I'm receiving on my notebook which is equiped with a fairly old Belkin PCMCIA wireless network card -

802.11b

I used to use cable (NTL) in my old place and used to run just a wireless belkin gateway router which the cable modem plugged into and I had no problems with the signal strength at all. In fact I used to regularly, in the summer work outside in the garden without any problems. With my new kit the signal strength is only 50% max when my notebook is in the same room as the router and often drops below

30%!!! If I walk outside the room my connection drops completely. Obviously this is not what I want and I was expecting something better than this

I have a wireless thermostat (yep good old CM67) and that has no problems at all working from all rooms.

I have also tried all channels to no avail. The signal quality is pretty high according to the WLAN monitor often hitting 100%. Does anyone have any ideas why I am experiencing this and any ideas how I can fix or improve the signal, could this be a problem at the BT end?

For attenuation I am seeing 59.0 downstream and 31.5 up if that helps

TIA

Cheers

Richard

[alexeveritt]

Hi, There are a number of things that can cause a drop in strength including the weather. It is very important to ensure that access point is in a central location. Do you have any electrical devices that could be causing interference. Is there anyone else locally with a wireless network.

The ADSL is totally seperate to the wlan.

I have worked with a number of wireless kits and I now only use D-Link as I have found them to be the most reliable. Check that you have the latest firmware and that the card is compatible.

Are you using XP with sp2 as it causes a lot of problems with WLANs if they are configured manually (Properly)

Try resetting your access point.

(Just a bit of a dumb question, but you have switched off your old router)

Heres a bit of a hack. Use your old router and connect your adsl router into it. Switch of the access point.

HTH Alex

[r.rain]

Hi Alex

I have covered the usual suspects, interference, objects, resetting AP etc before I posted this. unfortunately I dont have access to my old router so cant try that and the card is compatible with the new router as this is backward compatible with the 802.11b standard.

I did however just ring the Belkin Helpdesk in India, suprise surprise. Apart from the women talking like a robot (and an indian one at that) which was a little difficult to undestand, she gave me a potential solution all within 10 minutes.

The potential solution was to change the wireless mode to Mixed LRS from auto. Auto never seems to work well and should of thought about changing this myself!

Anyway something to try.

Thanks for your response.

Cheers

Richard

[Mike Barnes]

I've come to the conclusion that it sometimes just doesn't work. For example I have a (Dell, Centrino) laptop whose 802.11b simply never works in our kitchen. Changing channels and/or moving the (Belkin) base station, even right next to the laptop, are futile. Other WiFi devices work fine in the kitchen, it's just one laptop that refuses to. At one stage I thought it must have been some strangely-targeted interference, but I went to great lengths to eliminate interference (taking all battery-operated RF devices to the bottom of the garden, turning off mains at the fuse-box to everywhere but the detached garage and running an extension lead from there to the base station) and it didn't make a blind bit of difference. Interference from neighbours is unlikely to be an issue because our nearest neighbour is over 100 metres away. There's something about that laptop in that room.

FWIW WiFi reception is generally poor in this house, which has some

400mm-thick internal walls. I now have two base stations (one Belkin, one unbranded) and I still get *very* patchy coverage.

[Christian McArdle]

Yes. I never seem to get anything like the advertised reception in my house. I would be happy with 1/10th the published range. This is with only a thin tongue and grooved wall in the way. Not even masonry.

Christian.

[Bill]

Probably way off target but there isn't a lamp post mounted cctv camera in the road outside is there? A lot of these use 2.4Ghz to transmit their pictures back and could cause blocking of your system, they run a lot more power than you. Along similar lines there are plenty of 2.4Ghz cameras around that people put in odd places for cctv use. I know a bit about cctv but not wifi so this is only speculation. When you have tried everything how about moving the kit to another location all together, work maybe, and seeing how it behaves there?

[Tim S]

Sadly, marketing speak has become an acceptable technical description.

My 802.11b+g base station + card claim 54Mbit/sec but the most I can get is 34, with station and client in the same room. At least this 34Mbit/sec validates with the data throughput I actually get, allowing for protocol overhead.

Same with the 802.11a types we've been testing at work - except they give out totally after traversing 2-3 drywalls. Fine for open-plan coverage, but generally a bit useless otherwise, which is why I go for 802.11g most of the time.

Why nobody's ever been busted under trades descriptions I don't know :/

Tim

[Tony Hogarty]

It's because of the clever use of the wording 'up to'!

[Bob Mannix]

Only going horizontal and vertical (IYSWIM) the longest jump in my house is two rooms along (well three if you count the room it's in as it's the far side) and one down, plus there's a bloody great masonry chimney in the way. At that point the signal strength is low but it still works. The upstairs rooms are thin plaster block construction (don't ask). Anywhere out of the shadow of the chimney is good to excellent signal strength.

This is using

and a Tosh (Centrino enabled) laptop.

[Tim S]

All I can say is I'd sure like to meet the bloke who managed 54Mbit/sec on exactly one occasion so that they could legitimately claim this.

Yeah - I know, it was in an EM shielded room in a lab somewhere and one of the TX/RX units wasn't a PCMCIA card with a rubbish internal antenna.

Still should have their veggies chopped off for blatant misleading advertising though.

Tim

[Lee]

Lol, don't say that around the router forums if you don't want to be flamed Especially the Di-624 ;)

D-Link firmware seems to be the weak point, my router is fine with the latest f/w, but was temperamental through the previous 5 releases.

I've thrown the matching D-Link 54g laptop card in the bin as being next to useless though, the internal mini-pci Dell TrueMobile one I subsequently bought is much better ;) It's sitting at -30dBm signal and

-91dBm noise, 2 rooms away from the router :)

Each to their own of course, but I turn of the XP wireless management service, because it's nothing but a royal pain. The Dell client works much better on my Toshiba ;)

Lee

[alexeveritt]

What are the settings on your network card.

I'd recommend

Mode be set to Infrastructure TXRate to auto Powermode to continuous access

On a small network I recommend using static IPs instead of the DHCP server.

On your access point check that the settings all match up Set the Preamble to Short Preamble.

The wirless standards keep changing especially with regards to things like encryption and it's a pain when you add new hardware to an existing network because the new hardware.

My advice would be to get a new card that is designed to go with your router. However before you fork out =A330-50 you may want to take your router to another house, office or garden etc and test it there so you can rule out interference at your home. If you have a laptop simply take the router and laptop and plug them in somewhere else and using your browser, type in the IP address of the router in to test your connection. You don't need to worry about any other cables such as ADSL because they are unrelated.

Good luck=20

alex

[Lee]

Ah, but it's relatively easy to get 54Mbs overall transfer, the problem is that around 30Mbs of that is network protocol overheads, so the usable transfer even in ideal conditions is only around 20Mbs :(

Lee

[Andy]

That'll be me then - 54Mbit with wireless router downstairs, laptop upstairs.

3Com 11g/b wireless router, IBM Thinkpad with built in 11b/g adapter.

[Andy]

Have you ruled out interference from the CM67 ?

[Tim S]

Was that measurable throughput (with allowances for overhead) or just what the Windows driver reported - only some of the Windows drivers are known to lie a little.

We've never managed to get near that where I work, despite a variety of "pro-quality" base stations and a wide variety of cards on the client.

Tim

[r.rain]

Yes I have, I have also now reached a point in life where I no longer take it around with me everywhere! :)

I dont have any CCTV cameras around either. I've tried the LRS setting as Indian robot advised and still not much success. In fact it is the same, although it is better than yesterday and I can get access in my kitchen which is directly below the wireless kit (Lathe and plaster ceiling) and I can get a signal in the room next door (solid brick). I cant however get a signal anywhere else! The lounge is really where I want it and outside. I'm going to pop of to Currys now to get a 54g card to see if that makes any difference.

Thanks all for all your feedback

Richard

[Stefek Zaba]

Stupid as this may sound... and may in fact be... have you tried mounting the base station upside down!? It's just possible the antenna pushes out more signal up-and-sideways than down... Ignore this suggestion if you've tried already; otherwise, try to find some way of suspending it so the tip of the antenna isn't resting on a solid surface (well, this *is* uk.d-i-y after all).

Radio is voodoo - and the shorter the wavelength, the more blood and chickens you need!

[r.rain]

Needless to say couldn't find what I wanted anywhere!

Just tried suspending it upside down no joy. It's weird as soon as I walk out of the room 20ft and into my bedroom the signal dies completely, not impressed. Im thinking now its just purely down to the makeup of the building although a majority of the upstairs walls are lathe and plaster which I thought radio would deal with easily. My other place which was mainly dry lined had no problems.

I will make another attempt to get a 802.11g card tommorow and try again, failing that I guess I'll have to wire in somekind of repeater. I'm not even convinced that this is going to work very well either.

Do I just need a wireless access point and are these actually wireless devices or will I need to cable this into my modem/router?

TIA

Cheers

Richard

[GymRatZ]

I have on PC hooked up to the office/shop network on the netgear router/firewall/WIreless thingy and it is always conected at somewhere between 96 & 108 Mbps.

I should however say it is only 8' away though.

:¬))