Hey Charlie,
We were chasing a wireless network issue a few months ago, and last year as
well.
I believe I'm getting interference from some way over powered network, maybe
on a large farm in the area.
The system is this...
Radio antenna on the tower at the house, gets a broadband wi-fi ISP
connection from a place in town that services rural areas.
House, where the radio on the tower is, has a Linksys router. It definitely
succumbs to whatever band sweeping interference I'm seeing. Swapped routers
with the shop (SMC) and experienced the same issue.
The shop wireless (fed by a wire from the house router to a hub, then to the
wireless) is inside a entirely steel building. When all the doors are
closed, it is far less sensitive to being interrupted. When I open garage
doors, etc., I believe I see the same issues as the house, although to a
lesser degree.
I have no way of effectively measuring if the wired connections suffer from
the same band sweeping (meaning I'm not being affected at the router level,
but at the radio level. Is there a tool for that?
ISP swears all is well on their end. I borrowed an extra radio, hooked it up
to DC/AC power supply, and my laptop, and drove around the neighborhood. I
saw lots of activity in a range near where the radio is. ISP has suggested
that one of their competitors has some range sweeping signal far outside of
FCC approved power levels.
Right now, in the shop, I can see the house network, with the doors closed.
I can also see the house network repeater that I have in the shop.
House network, on a repeater in the shop, seen in the shop with doors
closed...computer stationary, and repeater 5 ' away.
Signal at -24
SNR a range of 74 to 21 in the few seconds I just looked
Shop network, 5' away, getting its signal thru a hub, hard wired through a
Ethernet cable back to the house router...
Signal at -25
SNR a range of 70 to 32 in the few seconds I just looked.
Changing the physical location of the laptop.... now 90 degrees different,
and only 3' from the house repeater, and shop router...
No change.
The Windows task manager wireless and LAN graphs show almost no wired, (less
than a 1/2 % and occasional usage up to 2.5% on wired... so, despite 3
computers, Apple Airport receiving Itunes wireless from laptop (makes no
difference in this issue if its disconnected) I'm barely tasking the
network.
-----Original Message-----
From: charlie shelden [mailto:shelden3@pldi.net]
Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2006 3:29 PM
To: Wm. Severin Thompson
Cc: spridgets@autox.team.net; team-thicko@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: tech geek question, no LBC
I utilize NS weekly as well as a commercial product called Airmagnet in
our company. We have a large wifi network with 27 sites. Anyway, what
you are more than likely seeing is reflections and or the characteristics
of your internal antenna on your laptop. I imagine if you were to do a
360 you will see different readings as the antenna is oriented to the
signal source. Are you seeing degradation in performance? Dropped packets
and that type of thing? +/- 30 db is a pretty good swing for a stationary
receiver. Could also indicate a problem at the signal source as well. I
get the best scans from an external card usually.
Hope that helps.
> So, any of you pocket protector types out there.
>
>
>
> Got Network Stumbler, or similar network sniffer that gives a near time
> read
> out of signal?
>
>
>
> When you're stationary within range of your wireless network, and in this
> case, within 5', how much fluctuation are you seeing in your SNR (signal
> to
> noise ratio)?
>
>
>
> Both of my wireless networks can see a swing of + or - 30 in a second or
> two, and are in continual wide fluctuation
>
>
>
>
>
> Wm. Severin Thompson
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