Wireless Signal Drops

[Oldtech]

Hi All

I have a problem that I have just started working on for a client. It's a location with 2 buildings about 300 feet apart.

A cable company (Time Warner) provides a UBEE cable modem/ 4 port router Ports 1 and 3 are used for a ATM machine and Credit Card Machine Port 2 is connected to a Cisco SG100D -08 switch, and Port 4 appears to have an error and is not used (I need to investigate this later).

The Cisco SG100D-08 has 3 connections, Port 1 is connected to the Ubee, Port 8 is unknown and Port 5 connects to an ASUS RT-N66U Wireless Router. The ASUS Router has 3 antenna 1 of which has been removed and an external antenna has been connected which sits on the roof and is aimed at the building 300 feet away. This part ( the building 300 feet away) all works great!!

The area closest to the ASUS has difficulty with wireless signals. For example they will have Pandora running and it will disconnect. People will try to connect and will be unable to and then at other times they will connect with no problems.

I hope you're still with me and I apologize for the length of this post, I'm almost done I promise!

I ran a wireless scanner program (I'll get the name if needed) and it was showing the signal to be a sawtooth, going from -40db down to -95db. If I went to the building 300 feet away the signal was steady. I'm thinking something causing interference but that would be strange. If anyone has any idea's at all I'm all ears.. er eyes!

Thanks much for reading

 

[JackMDS]

If you have in your back yard few water faucets you can connect each one to whatever you want to, one would affect the other.

On the other hand the four wheel of a car has to work together and you can not take one wheel off to use it elsewhere and expect the car to be used as usual.

Antennae of Wireless Router are Not faucets they are more like Wheels of a car.

In addition using and Antenna with long coax cable at 2.4GHz is a No No, it reduces the signal and destabilizes the output of the Router with SNR and SWR.

Wireless Network should be extended with a Wireless Bridge.

With all due respect whoever designed this Wireless concoction as No clue how to use extended distance Wireless and should seek a consultant to help.

This page was written a while ago, ignore the Specific hardware that is mentioned the priciples are still ok.

http://www.ezlan.net/bridging.html

 

[VirtualLarry]

Since the Asus is being used for long-distance wireless, and is apparently working ok for that (?), then consider adding another wireless AP to the switch, for local wifi.

 

[Oldtech]

Thanks much Jack and Larry. I have been configuring wired networks for years but just not too many wireless setups. I thought that the antenna setup was a bit strange but could not find more info to help[ explain it.

They seem to have 3 accounts on the wireless, 2 guest 1 secure. I'm going to check it out again today. I guess I will need to disable the accounts that are not used to communicate for long distance then just add a wireless Ap to the switch.

I am reading that link I was given by Jack to make sure I'm not missing anything.

 

[Oldtech]

Update:

Over this past weekend I was able to look at the signal a bit closer. I found that if I connected with the Asus the signal would stop being a sawtooth and go to a steady signal. I assume that this may be the feature that this AP has which locks on to the user's device.

What I plan on doing is disabling the 2 guest connections in the Asus setup so that I can add a new wireless router (Access point?) which will handle local wireless.

I'm looking at Asus RT-AC68U Dual-band Wireless-AC1900 Gigabit Router which I believe should handle the load and will be connected to the cisco switch. I'm trying to find info on how many wireless connections this or others could handle.

Any help, advise or comments are greatly appreciated.