A Tale of 2 Wireless Networking Fiasco's

[The_Silent_One_1]

(D-Link Woes)

I have a customer that has a Dlink DI-614+ wireless router and a DWL-520+ PCI wireless nic. The router is in an office upstairs. Coming out of the office, you turn right, walk about 10 feet, turn left go down the stairs, walk ahead another 15 feet and you're at the other computer. The remote system is only about 50 feet away, but average signal strength is 50% or so. Signal Quality is usually 90-100%. It often get's diconnected, and even when it is connected, it is slow.

I've tried.

A. Multiple Firmware's for both the router and the nic. Both are currently up-to-date

B. Both D-Link's Connection Software, and Having Windows take care of Wireless Networking

C. D-Link's 4X Mode and just the regular 11Mbps

D. A Hawking 6db Antenna on one antenna and then the other. (Seems to have slowed it down actually)

E. A Complete Format of the Remote System (XP Home)

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(Linksys Woes)

Mainly because of the former scenario, with customer B, (my wifes relatives), I went with A Linksys-branded System. WRT54G Ver. 1.1. Before I even sold it to them, I brought over a 802.11b SMC Barricade Router to their house and did a test run... Their house is three stories, and it seemed to work fine with an 80% average signal in the basement and third floor. So I went ahead and sold them this Linksys system, A Linksys Wireless G PC Card, (as well as a new desktop, and laptop). I finally had enough of trying to connect the laptop to the router with PSA (or whatever that newer encryption standard is called), and settled on just using the mac filter in the router config to only allow the laptop nic's mac address. Everything worked ok for a time, and then their desktop stopped connecting to the net. I went over and the router couldn't grab an ip address from the internet (Shaw Cable). I released the ip address for the desktop, by-passed the router, attempted to renew... failed. After a reboot however, the desktop grabbed an ip address from Shaw. Somewhere in there, I updated to Linksys latest firmware, and things didn't improve much. I would finally get an ip address on the router, browse fine on the desktop... then browsing would cease... I would release and renew on the router, renew would fail... wireless connection was also very sporadic. I went from having my choice of the linksys, and some neighbour's linksys, to
not being able to view either one. I changed the channel and then was able to view our router, but not the neighbour's. So I brought in my smc router the next day, and had trouble getting an ip address from shaw again. I had them call Shaw, they sent a tech the next day, (I left them plugged into cable direct in the meantime, (gulp). The tech shows up, plugs the SMC back in... and it works, he changes the SSID on the laptop to match the SMC, and it works... (Although I'm sure he's using absolutley no security... and is a b class and not a g) I don't know if I should be glad or annoyed. I was reading someone's post at sveasoft, who said that they fixed connectivity troubles with sveasoft's firmware... Now I'm rambling... A broken-down shell of my former self... (Sob) PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER MAN !! (SLAP !!) (BIFF) (BASH !!)

Also, Does anyone know of any way that I can prevent this faimilies 13-year old girl from changing any networking settings when she has the slightest trouble connecting? I thought maybe a limited User Account might do the trick, but it still allows some input. (XP Pro)

[NooNoo]

How about passwording the router and the ap?

As for your other problem, wep and wpa drove me insane, couldn't get a connection at all with that, for me, mac address filtering and turn off ssid did the trick.

[The_Silent_One_1]

How about passwording the router and the ap?

As for your other problem, wep and wpa drove me insane, couldn't get a connection at all with that, for me, mac address filtering and turn off ssid did the trick.
She doesn't get into the router, whenever there's a connection issue, she starts clicking and gets into the Windows Wireless Connection Settings and gets changing stuff and connecting to the neighbors house

[NooNoo]

yup just take away local admin.

[Gollo]

For your problem with low to no signal and slow speeds try changing the channel on the ap. You'll have to do some experimenting to find the right one but I think it is interference with another 2.4 ghz device (ie wireless phones, microwave ovens or somebody elses ap on the same channel). Use netstumbler with a supported card (ie orinoco or one of it's clones) and you can get a signal to noise ratio (noise being interference from other devices etc) and that will tell you a LOT. Also like noonoo said. Disable ssid and enable mac filtering. Setup the device with wep off too. Then once you get it all working and still feel the need for protection then turn it on. It saves a LOT of headaches.

[The_Silent_One_1]

For your problem with low to no signal and slow speeds try changing the channel on the ap. You'll have to do some experimenting to find the right one but I think it is interference with another 2.4 ghz device (ie wireless phones, microwave ovens or somebody elses ap on the same channel). Use netstumbler with a supported card (ie orinoco or one of it's clones) and you can get a signal to noise ratio (noise being interference from other devices etc) and that will tell you a LOT. Also like noonoo said. Disable ssid and enable mac filtering. Setup the device with wep off too. Then once you get it all working and still feel the need for protection then turn it on. It saves a LOT of headaches.
I did set it up with SSID disabled, MAC filter enabled, and WEP off. The problem there, seems to be that when the signal drops, it doesn't automatically re-connect when the signal comes back up. And then it pops up with the (blah-blah-blah about Windows has found 1 or more available networks, and then when you double-click on the netowkr adapter SYStray icon, it comes up and asks you to check the box if you want to connect to this "insecure network"... and the setting doesn't seem to ever save. It's like everything's fine for a bit with no SSID, but once you lose the connection, WIndows is compeltely dumb-founded.

[craigmodius]

Another vote for 2.4 ghz cordless phones. An article about it here (http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/3290381).

[NooNoo]

I did set it up with SSID disabled, MAC filter enabled, and WEP off. The problem there, seems to be that when the signal drops, it doesn't automatically re-connect when the signal comes back up. And then it pops up with the (blah-blah-blah about Windows has found 1 or more available networks, and then when you double-click on the netowkr adapter SYStray icon, it comes up and asks you to check the box if you want to connect to this "insecure network"... and the setting doesn't seem to ever save. It's like everything's fine for a bit with no SSID, but once you lose the connection, WIndows is compeltely dumb-founded.
AAAH, thats your problem. Do NOT use the XP native wireless config window. Install the one that came with the pci/pcmcia card and turn off the XP one. You will be able to put in a "profile" for your preferred settings. It will then always reconnect to the preferred profile, but will not popup and invite you to trash your existing settings.

[The_Silent_One_1]

AAAH, thats your problem. Do NOT use the XP native wireless config window. Install the one that came with the pci/pcmcia card and turn off the XP one. You will be able to put in a "profile" for your preferred settings. It will then always reconnect to the preferred profile, but will not popup and invite you to trash your existing settings.
Hmmm... Well it wasn't my first choice to do that, but after fiddling with the manufacturers software and having it lose connection and not be able to regain it... I went with XP's Zero-Config... and it seemed to work better (cringe)

[NooNoo]

Go to the manufacturer website, find the updated driver/config utility. Had to do this with everyone I have fitted.

[Gollo]

AAAH, thats your problem. Do NOT use the XP native wireless config window. Install the one that came with the pci/pcmcia card and turn off the XP one. You will be able to put in a "profile" for your preferred settings. It will then always reconnect to the preferred profile, but will not popup and invite you to trash your existing settings.
You can tell the windows client to NOT connect to any and all aps it sees but only the ones that are configured. This is in the wireless tab under advanced. Uncheck the "automatically connect to non-preferred networks" and check the middle option (access point (infrastructure) only). Does the same thing. Cheers.