Wireless networking - any experts out there ?

[Adrian Brentnall]

HI Folks The new 'net connection came complete with a wireless router - so was playing with the idea of getting rid of the wired network connections between the three (dell desktop) office pc's (winxp) and the router and loacting the router at the master socket.

Bought a couple of 'Newlink' Wireless 11g 54Mbps PCI cards (CPC) & installed them. Wouldn't install under Windows' 'found new hardware' routine - had to use the manufacturer's own utility to install.

Anyway - they seem to be working - but one of the PCs is losing its wireless connection intermittently, and both were in a 'very unresponsive, mouse cursor not responding' sort of place, this morning.

-needed rebooting to get any life...

Looking at the diagnostics on the wireless cards - both are showing

100% signal strength (can't be more than 10ft from the pc to the router!) - and (only?) 60 - 80% link quality. The detailed stats show (amongst other things) rx retry of 20% - and a whole bundle of RX CRC errors..

There's no troubleshooting info with the PCI cards - and no means of contacting a tech support organisation - the instruction leaflet says 'contact your vendor' ..... (CPC! - yeah, right)

So - 'Dear Marge - is this normal ?' If so - I think I'll just dump the wireless idea and go back to good old cables!

Thanks for any advice / experience Adrian

[Dave Liquorice]

Don't know those cards, are they using the WiFi frequencies around

2.5GHz? If so there are only 3 channels that don't mutually interfere with each other (1, 6 and 11 IIRC). See if you can find a channel that has the least number of other (visible) devices on it. In an urban area you may well find every channel chocker block with stuff and there will be stuff you won't be able to see with your LAN kit like video senders etc.

Cables work reliably and will be quicker unless you have a 10BaseT LAN rather than 100BaseT, even the the 10BaseT could out perform many wireless links. Oh and don't forget security...

[Tim..]

In a word.. yes, I would.

Use some homeplugs if you need data where is it not that easy to cable Cat5 to.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Adrian Brentnall explained :

Over such a very short range, no it is not normal - but wired always beats wireless for speed and reliability. There are a number of free pieces of software, which can make use of your wireless card to see what other wifi systems are running around the same area - not all work with all wifi adaptors, but one is almost certain to. They will show what else is around, how strong their signals are and which channels are in use.

You need to find a clear channel with at least one clear channel either side of it - make sure your card is configured to use UK channels and turn your router off whilst it scans. These things are only able to identify wifi interference from other wifi systems, but there are many other sources of interference such as microwave ovens etc. able to wipe the signal out.

FYFI - I have a wifi router which provides a reliable fixed link over

0.5Km in a very built up area using directional antennas. Just so you know it can be done.

[MM]

I wouldn't touch wireless networking with a bargepole. Cat 5e cabling for me every time.

MM

[Adrian Brentnall]

I don;t think you could call us 'urban' Our nearest neighbour is about 250 ft away - next one after than is half a mile or so (and they're in the 80's - so not heavy users of wireless technology!)

I did try changing channels - and it seemed to work on this PC but not on the important one (my wife's PC!)

Yes - I think it's back to cables. Wife's PC is already back on the wired connection - I think I'll do the same with this one...

Thanks (lesson learned!)

[Roger Mills]

Unless you're frequently moving your PCs (laptops?) around, I'd go for a wired solution every time. It's far more reliable and far more secure. [If wireless is flakey out of the box, think what it will be like when you introduce decent encryption!]

If you *really* want to stick with wireless, disable the router's DHCP server function and give each PC a fixed IP address. That will immediately eliminate one common type of wireless connectivity problem.

[Adrian Brentnall]

Sounds sensible. Actually, the laptop is running reasonably well (it's an old laptop!) on a wireless connection (using a wireless different adapter)- which suggests to me that the router's doing its stuff - and it's these two wireless cards that are carp...

Not much need to run anything 'beyond the wires' - the weather station server / mp3 jukebox in the outside studio has a flying Cat5 cable - so it was really just a (not so) bright idea to try and reduce the cabling in the office..

Thanks

[Tim W]

Roger Mills wibbled on Monday 04 January 2010 10:56

In the defence of WIFI, mine's rock solid and running WPA2-PSK. That's not the most secure but it's good enough for most people.

[The Natural Philosopher]

TNPS advice to people contemplating replacing a wired Ntework

Dont.

Welcome to the wide wonderful world of WiFi.

Shit chipsets, even shittier drivers and then Windows/...

ONLY reliable wireless machines I know of do NOT run windows. Macs are actually good. Linux is pretty good IF you can find the drivers.

usual crap. Probably got some other 2.4 gear running. Try a different channel?

best advice really.

I spent two- weeks trying to get a wireless enabled printer to talk to a router 5 feet away. Gave up and ran a cable.

Tried 3 routers

NFG.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not strictly true.

There are 11 channels IIRC, and all to an extent interfere with each other.

[Mike Barnes]

Adrian Brentnall :

My first thought is: why would anyone do that? I can't think of a single reason why I'd change from wired to wireless, unless I *really* needed the portability.

Or perhaps the clue is in the "locating the router at the master socket". That seems like a good idea, but if there wasn't any way of doing it other than wireless, I wouldn't bother.

Have you looked at Homeplugs (ethernet over mains)? More expensive than wireless, but IMO much better in every respect except portability.

[Dave Osborne]

Outside of a corporate context (i.e. with an 802.1x authentication server), what's more secure than WPA2-PSK?

DaveyO

[Yellow]

This sounds like a driver issue to me.

First, uninstall the drivers and then get them back off the manufacturer's disk - sometimes windows screws up if it installs "generic" drivers (or fails to install them properly) and then you use a disk to install new ones over the top.

Second, if that doesn't improve things, use the "search for the best driver on the internet" function to see if that can find more up to date drivers.

Third, search for your hardware (using the part number as ID) on the internet and see if updated drivers are available or if there are any comments from others having similar problems.

For the record, I use wireless (in a built up area) successfully, so it is possible - do not give up at the first hurdle.

[Clive George]

• 1 on this. I've not had a problem with wifi since we changed to using laptops a couple of years ago. It also works reliably in other places.

I'd consider wired for fixed kit if cabling is easy, but otherwise am very pleased with the radiation cooking my brain :-)

[Bill]

In message , Clive George writes

As someone else with a cooked brain, may I throw in another thought.

A wifi router is set to a channel and can work fine to one laptop. Add more machines and they are all in contention on the same channel.

It seems to me that if any users work with substantial amounts of data - eg working with audio or video data, or if there are reasons to copy much data across the wifi network, everything can knit itself into a fine mess.

Am I right? And does this also apply to the mains carrier systems?

[Timothy Murphy]

I completely disagree. WiFi normally works perfectly well. There is something wrong with the setup in the OP's case. I'd try re-setting the PCI cards, moving the antennae, etc. If that didn't work I'd assume there was something wrong with the WiFi cards, and try another make, maybe USB.

[Tim W]

The Natural Philosopher wibbled on Monday 04 January 2010 11:24

That's usually most of the time now. Broadcom and Intel chipsets are well supported (even if it means a binary driver) and then there's NDIS wrapper...

[Tim W]

Dave Osborne wibbled on Monday 04 January 2010 11:38

You just said it...

WPA2-PSK is good enough for most people, but it would be wrong to state it's the most secure solution ;->

[Tim W]

Bill wibbled on Monday 04 January 2010 12:13

It shouldn't turn into a mess - it's designed to cope with that scenario. But it will cause all the other connections to slow down.

All systems are limited to a typical number of bits/sec. Once you overload that, of course things suffer.

But you obviously have to try a bit harder to overload a fileserver serving at gigabit speeds than one serving over a 30ish Mbit/s Wifi link.

I wire my core machines together with gig. My laptop runs fine on 802.11g unless I have a lot of data to move, then I plug it in. My link to the Internet is currently over WIFI too as I don't have the cables in place - but that's 6Mbit/sec over a 30-ish Mbit/sec capable link so no problems...