What's required to make wireless reliable?

[Rick Stevens]

Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 17:47:56 -0600, Otto Haliburton
> <ottohaliburton at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
>>
>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>From: redhat-install-list-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:redhat-install-list-
>>>bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Otto Haliburton
>>>Sent: Friday, March 25, 2005 5:42 PM
>>>To: 'Mark Knecht'; 'Getting started with Red Hat Linux'
>>>Subject: RE: What's required to make wireless reliable?
>>>
>>>>For those of you using wireless what sort of signal strength do you
>>>>see for your connections and are those connections really reliable?
>>>>With these levels it generally takes 5 minutes for the PC to establish
>>>>a connection with the router in the morning and we get dropouts all
>>>>day long.
>>>>
>>>>Thanks in advance,
>>>>Mark
>>>>
>>>
>>>I'm not sure what your problem is but in general, a wireless transmitter
>>>has
>>>a range of about 300 feet and since all of your wireless stuff is within
>>>that range since you are in your house, I don't think your problem is with
>>>the strength of signal unless... If all of your computers, I seem to
>>>remember your have 3 are dropping the signal then you might have a faulty
>>>router, otherwise you have something that is interfering, which happens.
>>>The thing to do is move the router to a different location and see if it
>>>improves.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>I have heard that some people do the thing they used to do to tv antennas
>>and that is added aluminum foil to the antenna and sometimes a coat hanger
>>with aluminum foil.  Don't know if it works or not hahaha
> 
> 
> Yeah, I've thought of the tin foil idea, but these antenna are not
> metal on the outside. (Or so it seems.)
> 
> I've moved the router to all the convienient places. It got
> significantly better, but not nearly good enough.

Remember that 802.11b and g are both "line-of-sight".  The more walls
and such it has to go through, the worse the reception.  The problem is
worse if any of the walls are "oblique" to the signal paths (greater
than 90 degrees) as it makes the effective thickness of the wall
greater.

In order of range, 802.11a has the longest but it's not commonly used
anymore and it's not particularly fast.  802.11g is second in range,
802.11b has the shortest.

As far as brands are concerned, I've used D-Link, Linksys and Cisco.
The Cisco seems to have the best range.  The D-Link and Linksys seem
to be about equal.  I'm using a D-Link currently (an old DS-614+,
802.11b) with two external +7dB antennas and it works fine for me, but
I'm just doing file transfers and vnc sessions--not listening to music.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-            I'm afraid my karma just ran over your dogma            -
----------------------------------------------------------------------