Low Bandwidth

[ple88]

I live in an apartment building in lower manhattan. There are dozens of wireless networks visible from my apartment. Some secured; some not. I have a wireless g access point and use it for a notebook computer...the rest of my network is wired. I've purchased a wireless g bridge to set up a video stream to my tv, but i can't eek out sufficent bandwidth. need about 6mbs to sustain the video feed...but it stutters and freezes.

in a situtation such as mine, am i sharing bandwidth with the other networks even though i'm not logged into them? in other words, if there are 6 networks all set to channel 11, are we each going to see just 1/6 of the total available bandwidth? if so, i'm going to run another cat5 cable, because i've got at least 6 or 7 other networks going on channels 1, 6&11. there's nothing on the other in between channels, but they overlap, so there's little point in even trying, if this is the case.

thanks for any and all help.

 

[sswingle]

Well, the networks aren't sharing bandwidth, but its possible that multiple networks using the same channel are interfering with each other, so you are wasting a lot of bandwidth on error correcting.

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: ScottSwingleComputers
Well, the networks aren't sharing bandwidth, but its possible that multiple networks using the same channel are interfering with each other, so you are wasting a lot of bandwidth on error correcting.

Exactly. Use Netstumbler to find out what channels the other networks are using. And then assign your network to a less crammed channel.

Or, (since I'm guessing you have a decent sized apartment) you could change to an 802.11a network which is on a different spectrum entirely.

 

[Cheetah8799]

Originally posted by: PorBleemo

Originally posted by: ScottSwingleComputers
Well, the networks aren't sharing bandwidth, but its possible that multiple networks using the same channel are interfering with each other, so you are wasting a lot of bandwidth on error correcting.

Exactly. Use Netstumbler to find out what channels the other networks are using. And then assign your network to a less crammed channel.

Or, (since I'm guessing you have a decent sized apartment) you could change to an 802.11a network which is on a different spectrum entirely.

Changing to an 802.11a network would likely require completely new hardware, so should be a last resort I think

Netstumbler is an excellent tool. give it a try and see what most people are doing.

Or you could just log into all those unprotected default-setting routers out there and disable their wireless so that they stop interfering with your network. 😉