Wifi problems, is bluetooth an option.

[rhinoman]

Wifi access points seem to work for s few weeks and then pack up in my house, had one swapped under warranty this week, 3 months old and no problems untill a week ago then zip, new one turned up and worked for 45 minutes and then zip.... Took it round my brothers and it worked, brought it home and zip...changed nothing but next morning it worked fine all day but then next day.....ZIP!

I love xlobby via pda so I thought about giving bluetooth a try, anyone else done it before I buy a bluetooth compact flash card and AP?

[samgreco]

Sounds like you've got something else in the 2.4GHz range causing a problem. Microwave, phone, etc.

It's just strange that the problem comes and goes.

Bluetooth should work. Just shorter range.

[rhinoman]

Thanks Sam, Its totally bizarre, my laptop and pda both see the AP and connect to it but when you try to ping it, most of the time it times out, you get the occaisonal one back but more often than not...

I thought it was just bad luck but I've now had three AP's and now on my third broadband wifi router, all suffered similar problems either straight away or after a few months, it was only after taking it to my brothers at the weekend that I decided it must be my house

I've tried turning off the lighting circuits (loads of low voltage transformers) and changing the channels on the AP, only one channel produced 75% relaibility on pings, the others largley failed.

I only use the wifi for xlobby and remote-web (the house is cat5 cabled) so speed is not too much of an issue, I just need a relaible connection, is Bluetooth a different waveband?

[samgreco]

is Bluetooth a different waveband?

D'oh!

On the following site: http://www.palowireless.com/infotooth/t ... /radio.asp

The Bluetooth radio accomplishes spectrum spreading by frequency hopping in 79 hops displaced by 1 MHz, starting at 2.402GHz and finishing at 2.480GHz. In a few countries (i.e France) this frequency band range is (temporarily) reduced, and a 23-hop system is used. In order to comply with out of band regulations in each country. In both systems a guard band is used at the lower and upper band edge

Square one ?

[rhinoman]

Thats another great idea blown then, any ideas about a cheap wired lan connection to a pda, I could inbed the pda in the wall of each room then?

Cheapeast I found was £107 which compared to a wifi @£30 (which I have).

Can you connect a usb device to a pda? That might be a cheaperr option.

[rhinoman]

I did a search on wifi interference and found this

802.11b uses one of 11 overlapping 22 MHz wide channels in the ISM band, but Bluetooth uses 79 1 MHz wide channels in the band. The increased frequency agility and faster hopping speed allows Bluetooth to detect and react to interference very quickly.

Still might be worth a try with Bluetooth....

[samgreco]

Seems like it's worth a try. I'm still curious what might be causing it though

[AirPost]

John, I still think that it's interference that's causing your problems. In this case, it might just be in the 2.4 Ghz range (which is a popular range for other devices). Have you tried using or testing it with an 802.11a? I know they are not as common as 802.11g because they are not backward compatible with the b's but they operate at 5.15 - 5.82 Ghz range. There are routers out there that's tri-mode (a,b,g) if you want b compatibility. Only thing is, you will also need a 802.11a compatible wireless cards. Just my 2 cents.

edit: Sorry John, just reread your post. If you are using your wi-fi primarily for you ppc, the 802.11a is not yet supported. Your ppc would need to have support for Cardbus PC cards and the current chipsets that the ppc are using now (StrongARM & XScale from Intel) do not support this bus. Unless there's one out there already that I don't know of.

[rhinoman]

Airpost,

If it was just for the laptop then 802.11a would definitly be worth a try but my concern is more the PPC's as I have wired network points in most rooms which will do for the odd time I want to surf away from the office.

I'm gonna order some bluetooth bits today and give it a try but I'm also going to unplug all the phones and the microwave, I just find it bizarre that the laptop is sat next to the router, connected, 96%~ strength and link quality and then you ping it and only get 1 packet back

Is there anything else that might interfere?

[AirPost]

When you tested the ap's at your brother's house, did you test it with the same laptop you used at your house or did you use your brother's pc? Did it ever worked before at your place? It could just be configuration settings on the access point. What brand did you use? Do you have the access points setup for DHCP? Are you using a static ip address for your laptop?

Sorry for all the questions, I'm just curious why you are having this problem. At work, we have access points all over the place and the root of some of our wi-fi problems were just misconfiguration.

[rhinoman]

No problem with the questions....

The replacement router turned up last Wednesday, configured it and it worked fine for 1/2 hour then nothing, took it and my laptop to my brothers, tried my laptop with his AP and it was fine, swapped the AP's so my laptop and my router was fine.

MNy equipment is Netgear DG834G and 711G pcmcia card, his was Dratek 2600. He also lent me a drattek 11b card for my laptop to try.

When I got it home I reconfigured it and it wouldn't work. Tried moving the AP a couple of metres one way and then the other but still couldn't make it work. Pissed off I left it that night. Next morning it worked fine, the laptop and PPC worked fine all day. Next day it wont work again.

I left it unplugged last night to try it from "cold" but it wont work. I moved the AP last night so its right next to me so that I have 95-100% coverage.

I've used static and dhcp ip's, dhcp gives out duff ones when theres a poor connection. Last night I went through all the 13 channels 1by 1 to see if that made a differce but they all reacted much the same.

Any ideas?

[AirPost]

Just one. Can you check the MTU settings on your access point? If it is set at 1450 something, try changing it to 1500 and test connectivity. 1500 is the largest packet size and should be set as the default on your Netgear DG834G. If it is already set at that or you still have connectivity problems, try going lower. For a detailed explanation check this :

http://kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_files/n100603.asp

Please note that your MTU should match both for your access point and client for better performance.

Good Luck !

[rhinoman]

Ok changed the MTU from 1452 to 1500 and its still the same, about 1 in 4 packets come back from a ping.

Off to unplug the phones...

[rhinoman]

Well that hasn't helped either, phones unplugged and batteries removed, microwave switched off.

[rhinoman]

An hour or so later, I've changed nothing but its now working. I've even just plugged one of the dect phones back in.

I wonder how long it will last