Wireless Network Questions/Problems

[Slimmy]

Well, after spending almost 3 hours today trying to get my wireless PC card to work, I now got it working and the signal strength isn't that good. I am getting at most 45% when the laptop is in the room right next door to the router. And I bought this wireless router to hook up 4 upstairs rooms and a room downstairs. I tried the laptop in my room upstairs and I didn't get any signal from the router in the room downstairs. I got at most 60% from the room right above the router, and 10-20% from the middle upstairs room.

I was just wondering if there's any settings I need to set to get maximum range. I know the range on these things is overrated but only getting 40% from the room next door and no signal from another downstairs room probably about 50 feet away can't be right.

I also later brought the laptop into the same room as the router and was still only able to get 40-50% from no more than 5 feet away from the router. That can't be right.

Any tips on setting this up to get maximum range?

PS. The router is a Linksys BEFW11S4 and the card is the WPC11 PC Card. I can also make a rough diagram of the house layout if necessary.

 

[ktwebb]

Try a different base frequency (Channel). Default is usually 6, 2.436 Ghz. Try 1 or 11 and see if that helps you. If it does then there is interference somewhere near you. Make sure the antenna is tight on its post. ALso try messing around with polarization, east/west/north/south. Basically the position of the dipole antenna on the AP. Also, make sure your firmware is current on both the AP and the card. If all of this is done and it still doesn't help I would say client card. Linksys is notorious for junk wireless client cards. It should be better in the same room though so that would probably be my last gasp, getting a better card, orinoco preferably.

 

[JackMDS]

The percentage bar is not very meaningful. Try to measure actual ?Speed? by copying 10MB file and measure how long it takes.

While Linksys makes some fine Network Hardware, your specific combo is not so hot!

Orinoco Gold PCMCIA would probably yield better results.

 

[theanimala]

I had your configuration for a couple of days, and it worked well for me. I had 100% signal strength when in the same room, so something is wrong somewhere.

I upgraded to an Orinoco card and it is stronger, but I really bought the card because I got it for less $$ then the Linksys card. Try another card, if it doesn't improve then try another router. Something is bad somewhere.

 

[fogleroller]

I am having the same problem

I have the Linksys BEFW11S4 wireless router/gateway and a Orinco Silver (Lucent badged) 802.11b pc card.

I am in the same room as the router and I am getting full signal but only 6Mbps. It keeps on switching from 6Mbps to 11Mbps and back to 6.

I tried changing channels 1, 6, 11 and i get the same thing.

 

[JackMDS]

As said above the Signal Bar is just a representation. A full Signal Bar does not mean 11MB/sec. actually no body in the world can get 11Mb/sec. using 802.11b system. The number is a theoretical design number, not a working ?Speed transfer?.

When using good hardware, like the Orinoco line of Wireless units, a full signal in the same room usually yields 7-8Mb/sec.

In most others a full signal bar probably will represent and yield 4-7Mb/sec.

The fluctuation of Wireless Network is part of the nature of the ?beast?. Wireless is sensitive to interferences from other sources of hi frequency transmissions (there is a lot of them around).