This was a bizarre case I saw today. Linksys 802.11b router maybe 30' away (in line of sight) from laptop with Linksys card.
The client complained of slow internet. The other laptop in the house (down 2 flights of stairs) showed none of the slowness. The problem laptop would exhibit slowness when opening a web page, as in the page would half load, pause for a long while, then resume. When I did a standard ping of the router, most times, one of the 4 requests would time out. Signal strength was reported as excellent...
I could not log into the router to check settings using defaults or customer-suggested username/password. So I did a hard reset, then upgraded the firmware. I renamed the SSID, disabled its broadcast, and enabled WEP. Downstairs laptop was cruising.
This is where it gets odd. I first set up a new wireless profile in XP SP2 and it worked, but erratically. As in sometimes it would connect, other times it would not. Frustrated, I turned to the Linksys WLAN utility and that seemed to get a better connection instantly. Speeds were much improved over the original state - no more stunted opening web pages.
With signal strength at 86 - 100%, the Windows would report the connection as lost and the Linksys utility would grab onto some other ?MSHOME? network (56% strength) from a neighbor I presume.
So I?m struggling with 2 issues:
* Why is the Windows Wireless client flaky? Can it be made to work?
* What are some ways to prevent this PC from latching on to the neighbors?
Thanks.
The client complained of slow internet. The other laptop in the house (down 2 flights of stairs) showed none of the slowness. The problem laptop would exhibit slowness when opening a web page, as in the page would half load, pause for a long while, then resume. When I did a standard ping of the router, most times, one of the 4 requests would time out. Signal strength was reported as excellent...
I could not log into the router to check settings using defaults or customer-suggested username/password. So I did a hard reset, then upgraded the firmware. I renamed the SSID, disabled its broadcast, and enabled WEP. Downstairs laptop was cruising.
This is where it gets odd. I first set up a new wireless profile in XP SP2 and it worked, but erratically. As in sometimes it would connect, other times it would not. Frustrated, I turned to the Linksys WLAN utility and that seemed to get a better connection instantly. Speeds were much improved over the original state - no more stunted opening web pages.
With signal strength at 86 - 100%, the Windows would report the connection as lost and the Linksys utility would grab onto some other ?MSHOME? network (56% strength) from a neighbor I presume.
So I?m struggling with 2 issues:
* Why is the Windows Wireless client flaky? Can it be made to work?
* What are some ways to prevent this PC from latching on to the neighbors?
Thanks.
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