Weirdo wireless network issue... any ideas?

Factual Questions
1

I’ve had a wireless network in the house for years now. Everything’s worked fine up until Friday.

On Friday, all of a sudden I couldn’t connect to our wireless router. Nothing has changed - no new devices, no new drivers, nothing. Just something that worked now doesn’t.

I moved the router around, and could get it so that I could connect, but Mr. Athena couldn’t. Our offices are on opposite sides of the house. I couldn’t find a place to put it that allowed us both to get decent reception.

So I figure the router has gone bad, even though it’s not even a year old. So I go buy a new one - a Linksys this time, as I’ve heard good reviews on them since Cisco bought them. Our old router was a DLink.

Now everything in the house connects. Mr. Athena’s connection is great. However, two of the computers in my office get between 1Mb/s and 1.5 Mb/s. The laptop got close to 5 Mb/s for a while, now it’s back down to 1Mb/s. This is in the same room as the router.

I put the laptop RIGHT next to the router, and it gets 1Mb/s. If I connect it directly, using a wire, it gets 5Mb/s. Mr. Athena’s computer, faaaaaaaaaaaaaar away from the router, gets between 4.5 and 5.0 Mb/s connection.

I’m paying for 5Mb/s (out the nose, I might add). WTF is going on? Everything worked great until Friday. We even tried buying a new USB dongle to see if that helped, and get the same thing with the new one.

Oh, here’s something new: as I sit here, typing this, I lost connection. The USB dongle is literally 1" away from the dongle for my other computer, which did not lose connection. Are there network ghosts in my house?

2

There are some potential issues here:

  1. Interference. Is there anything else wireless in the room? Like a cordless phone(2.4GHz)?

  2. The USB dongle. These things don’t always have the greatest reputation. Usually, a wireless PCI card will be better.

  3. The USB port. It’s possible that your USB port is experiencing problems. Do you have another USB port you can try to use? Even better, try the USB dongle in a different computer and see if you have the same connectivity problems.

3

You could try running netstumbler to see if there are other wireless lans in the area that may be interfering. You could also wonder around with netstumbler running and see if you have dead spots.

4

If you left the SSID at the default (linksys, Netgear, even, literally “default”) then there is a fair to middling chance that one of your neighbors did the same. In this case they are probably both also both set to the same default channel and stepping all over each other. If these are true, then you probably also left the password at the default setting, and may well have an intruder messing with your wireless settings to improve that connection.

How to correct this will be specific to your router/AP. This will require that you read and follow the setup instructions in the manual. Google [manufacturer’s name +support] and download a copy of the manual if you have lost it.

5

I’ll check the SSID.

I know there’s no intruder on the line. I have MAC filters turned on, and I can see who’s attach to the network. I suppose there’s the chance that there’s some super hacker doing something goofy, but I really doubt it. I’m in a rural area, two neighbors, neither of which are particularly close.

I did notice that there’s another network that shows up sometimes on my computers. I’ll make sure my SSID and channel are not the default.

6

Well if you have the MAC filtering working, then you are ahead of the game. If you have WAP or WEP working, then you WAY ahead. But it could still be a problem if the SSID is set to a common default. If your neighbor’s setup has a stronger signal, then your wireless client will attempt to connect to them instead of to your network.

Or it may just be a wireless phone, microwave oven, etc. causing the problem. And changing channels Will likely help. In the US, all the wireless routers default to channels 1,6 or 11 So probably 2/3 of hotspots are on those three channels, so try those last. You only need to change the AP (router) the clients will scan all channels to find the SSID.

7

OK, I mucked with those settings and things seem to be better.

What I’d like to do next is set up some kind of monitor that I could leave on overnight or something. Is there any good software that would basically run upload/download tests for a number of hours? I’ve had problems with intermittent lag and disconnects and would like to see if that’s still happening. Tell me what the big kids use, please.

8

Bump for the Monday crowd.