D-Link 802.11a experience - flucuating signal strength with stationary devices

I have been running a small wireless network at home using a Xircom
802.11b WAP and various wireless cards including those built into a
notebook plus the Orinoco USB wireless NIC. It works fine across two
floors of my house, outside etc. Recently I decided for one machine I
needed higher speed access, mainly to be able to transfer files in the
gig range without having to wait forever :-( So I purchased a D-Link
DWL-5000AP 802.11a WAP and a DWL AG-520 802.11a/b PCI wireless
adapter. It all installed okay but performance is not great - mainly
in variability in reception strength. The PC (running XP Pro) with the
PCI wireless adapter is about 20' from the WAP which is mounted about
10' off the floor. There are two walls between the two devices but
they are just wooden frame sheetrock walls.

What I am finding is most of the time the reception shows excellent or
good strength. Surfing the internet from the remote machine is fine
but I try to map a drive on a PC on my network which is connected via
a wired connection and then try to transfer those large files I
mentioned, most times after a few minutes, the connection will be lost
and the transfer will abort. I never had these problems with the
802.11b connection but of course for gig files, the speed is too slow.

Can 802.11a and 802.11b network co-exist? I know 802.11a range isn't
as good but I didn't think with stationary devices on both sides that
signal strength would fluctuate that much

Any ideas appreciated

Thanks

Larry

I think I solved the problem. I had the default settings for managing
the wireless adapter to use XP so I couldn't use the D-Link software.
Once I turned that off I could use the D-link software to configure
the adapter. I set the adapter to only connect to 5Gz 802.11a networks
(only in range) while before I was searching and connecting to a
number of 802.11b networks in range (presumably neighbours) which I
guess caused the dropped connections for the mapped drive

I am now maintaining about 90% signal strength and can transfer files
across the wireless network with no drops (and much faster)O

Larry

(E-Mail Removed) (Larry) wrote in message news:<(E-Mail Removed). com>...
> I have been running a small wireless network at home using a Xircom
> 802.11b WAP and various wireless cards including those built into a
> notebook plus the Orinoco USB wireless NIC. It works fine across two
> floors of my house, outside etc. Recently I decided for one machine I
> needed higher speed access, mainly to be able to transfer files in the
> gig range without having to wait forever :-( So I purchased a D-Link
> DWL-5000AP 802.11a WAP and a DWL AG-520 802.11a/b PCI wireless
> adapter. It all installed okay but performance is not great - mainly
> in variability in reception strength. The PC (running XP Pro) with the
> PCI wireless adapter is about 20' from the WAP which is mounted about
> 10' off the floor. There are two walls between the two devices but
> they are just wooden frame sheetrock walls.
>
> What I am finding is most of the time the reception shows excellent or
> good strength. Surfing the internet from the remote machine is fine
> but I try to map a drive on a PC on my network which is connected via
> a wired connection and then try to transfer those large files I
> mentioned, most times after a few minutes, the connection will be lost
> and the transfer will abort. I never had these problems with the
> 802.11b connection but of course for gig files, the speed is too slow.
>
> Can 802.11a and 802.11b network co-exist? I know 802.11a range isn't
> as good but I didn't think with stationary devices on both sides that
> signal strength would fluctuate that much
>
> Any ideas appreciated
>
> Thanks
>
> Larry