Newbie wireless problems

AAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

I have a Netgear DG834G Wireless ADSL router. A couple of times a day my
connection will just freeze and then the network connection will drop
completely, and I theind myself unable to 'talk' to my router. I then
literally have to unplug the router from the mains to force it to work again.
Is this known problem with this model / firmware 1.02? I would upgrade the
firmware but I daren't due to the documented problems with the latest
version, and was also advised against it by Netgear themselves. Anyone know
when a safe 1.03 upgrade will be released?

On another issue I posted a while back asking about an antenna to improve
signal strength as my desktop PC was having problems connecting to the
network. I have since managed to postion my equipment so that I do get a
fairly good connection although the noise level is still quite high relative
to the signal strength. Anyway, despite the machine telling me I have a
'Very Good' connection at 54mbps I usually that I can only access the
internet or other machines very slowly, and sometimes not at all. If I try
and ping the router I usually lose between one and all packets.

What is most likely the cause of this, my router or my Belkin 54g wireless
network card. I have already tried switching PCI slots with no success, and
I don't have another card or PC to test with.

I don't know if this is relevant but on a fresh install of the card and
software it is set to 'use best rate' in the settings and it chooses 11mbps.
I then usually manually force it to use 54 instead. This time I am now going
to stay at 11 for a bit and see if it is more stable like that. How do I
proceed if it does work ok at this slower setting though? I paid for, and
naturally want a 54mbps connection.

Thanks in advance.

--
:: Steve Jackson - My site: http://tinyurl.com/iisf
:: Use Amazon? http://tinyurl.com/4kdn to help a preschool charity
:: Gamertag: SteJay AC: Name/town: Stejay/Jacktown
:: "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for Sega." - Brodie (Mallrats)

On 22 Feb 2004 08:51:34 GMT, Steve Jackson
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:


>I have a Netgear DG834G Wireless ADSL router.

> I have since managed to postion my equipment so that I do get a
>fairly good connection although the noise level is still quite high relative
>to the signal strength. Anyway, despite the machine telling me I have a
>'Very Good' connection at 54mbps I usually that I can only access the
>internet or other machines very slowly, and sometimes not at all. If I try
>and ping the router I usually lose between one and all packets.

Just as an experiment try altering the setting on the WiFi router to
802.11b only rather than auto and see if that improves the ping.
Although you would not get 54mbps it would be ample good enough for
the internet.

This worked for me.

If it works you can work from there.

Geoff Lane
Welwyn Hatfield Computer Club - Hertfordshire, UK
www.whcc.co.uk - Online facilities for non locals

Steve Jackson secured a place in history by writing:

> I don't know if this is relevant but on a fresh install of the card
> and software it is set to 'use best rate' in the settings and it
> chooses 11mbps. I then usually manually force it to use 54 instead.
> This time I am now going to stay at 11 for a bit and see if it is more
> stable like that. How do I proceed if it does work ok at this slower
> setting though? I paid for, and naturally want a 54mbps connection.
>

I would check this first, it sounds very much like the source of your
problem to me. I would imagine you can change this without reinstalling the
card somewhere.

You can get a 54mbps connection, by putting the access point right next to
your machine. This is a theoretical maximum, and performance will drop off
at distance and with obstructions, I very much doubt that the kit is at
fault here. There are parts of my house where the connection drops down to
this kind of level (I have a wireless Pocket PC which gets used all over
the place) - in fact, I'm in one now, using a laptop. It's still entirely
usable and unless you plan on doing major file transfers back and forth, I
doubt you'll see any difference. Even the fastest home internet
connections will be fine over the poorest 11g connections.

--
F

Would you like a chocolate-covered pretzel Geoff Lane?

> Although you would not get 54mbps it would be ample good enough for
> the internet.

Yeah, it is just that I wanted the option to stream MP3s etc, and I'd like to
at least have the option of transferring large files at a decent speed.

--
:: Steve Jackson - My site: http://tinyurl.com/iisf
:: Use Amazon? http://tinyurl.com/4kdn to help a preschool charity
:: Gamertag: SteJay AC: Name/town: Stejay/Jacktown
:: "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for Sega." - Brodie (Mallrats)

Would you like a chocolate-covered pretzel Ferger?

> I would check this first, it sounds very much like the source of your
> problem to me. I would imagine you can change this without reinstalling
> the card somewhere.

Yes I can. It was just that I noticed it auto set to best rate after an
install.

> You can get a 54mbps connection, by putting the access point right next
> to your machine. This is a theoretical maximum, and performance will
> drop off at distance and with obstructions, I very much doubt that the
> kit is at fault here. There are parts of my house where the connection
> drops down to this kind of level (I have a wireless Pocket PC which gets
> used all over the place) - in fact, I'm in one now, using a laptop.
> It's still entirely usable and unless you plan on doing major file
> transfers back and forth, I doubt you'll see any difference. Even the
> fastest home internet connections will be fine over the poorest 11g
> connections.

I am only about 15 feet away from the router, on the same floor, with a solid
wall and a radiator in between. I don't think the wall and radiator factors
in but I've mentioned it in case.

It isn't a steady 11mbps, sometimes it is 5.5, sometimes as low as 2. As you
say it is usable for general internet use, but as I mention elsewhere in this
thread, I would like to stream MP3s to my laptop without pauses, and have the
facility to do large transfers. Still if this is as good as it gets I'll
take it over wires.

Apart from the fluctations in speed I don't seems to have had any connection
problems really since I switched to 'Use best rate' at the time of my first
post. There is still an occasional packet loss, one in four in every say
five attempts to ping the router, but that could be expected anyway for
wireless, I don't know.

--
:: Steve Jackson - My site: http://tinyurl.com/iisf
:: Use Amazon? http://tinyurl.com/4kdn to help a preschool charity
:: Gamertag: SteJay AC: Name/town: Stejay/Jacktown
:: "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for Sega." - Brodie (Mallrats)

Welcome to the wonderful world of wireless...

On 22 Feb 2004 08:51:34 GMT, Steve Jackson
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>I don't know if this is relevant but on a fresh install of the card and
>software it is set to 'use best rate' in the settings and it chooses 11mbps.
>I then usually manually force it to use 54 instead. This time I am now going
>to stay at 11 for a bit and see if it is more stable like that. How do I
>proceed if it does work ok at this slower setting though? I paid for, and
>naturally want a 54mbps connection.

Taking that last bit first...nah, you didn't pay for a 54mbps
connection. You paid for kit which has the capability to run at up to
54mbps. Afraid that is a hugely different beast.

Remember back in the olden days when we all had analogue modems?
You'd buy, say, a 54kbps modem. You'd plug it into your phone line.
You'd dial up and get a connection speed....of anything between
9.6kbps and 54kbps. The quality of the phone line, the internal
wiring in your house, the price of BT shares - all influenced the
actual speed you got.

Wireless networking is the same in this respect. The kit offers a
maximum speed, and it works at whatever real speed it can.

There are so many factors that can influence the real speed but some
worthy of note...

o Having different branded equipment (shouldn't matter but seems to);

o What encryption levels you have set;

o The obstacles (particularly walls, fridge-freezers, girders) between
the equipment being connected;

o Other electrical "noise" in the environment.

Run with the 11mbps setting for a while and see how that goes. The
ahrdware is essentially telling you that this is its optimum speed for
the conditions - trust it.

You will (I hope) probably find it loses fewer packets and dies less
often. Internet connection sharing should be completely unaffected by
this drop in speed.

Only network file sharing and printing will noticeably be slower - and
that only matters with BIG files.

Your best bet would be to run a wired connection to the same room as
the wireless machine and hook up a WAP there. You will get an almost
perfect signal and may even get 54mbps.

Let us all know how the experiments go.

jay

Would you like a chocolate-covered pretzel jay?

> Taking that last bit first...nah, you didn't pay for a 54mbps
> connection. You paid for kit which has the capability to run at up to
> 54mbps. Afraid that is a hugely different beast.
>
> Remember back in the olden days when we all had analogue modems?
> You'd buy, say, a 54kbps modem. You'd plug it into your phone line.
> You'd dial up and get a connection speed....of anything between
> 9.6kbps and 54kbps. The quality of the phone line, the internal
> wiring in your house, the price of BT shares - all influenced the
> actual speed you got.
>
> Wireless networking is the same in this respect. The kit offers a
> maximum speed, and it works at whatever real speed it can.

That is a fair comment. I never thought of it like that, although perfectly
logical.

> There are so many factors that can influence the real speed but some
> worthy of note...
>
> o Having different branded equipment (shouldn't matter but seems to);

Yeah, so I understand. As you will have read the router is Netgear and the
desktop card is Belkin. My laptop card is also Belkin and appears to be fine
generally.

> o What encryption levels you have set;

I have limited the IP ranges of machines that can connect to the network but
I haven't set any encryption at all yet.

> o The obstacles (particularly walls, fridge-freezers, girders) between
> the equipment being connected;

As mentioned elsewhere in this thread I have a solid wall and a radiator in
between.

> o Other electrical "noise" in the environment.

Looking at the link status there seems to be alot of noise here compared to
the signal strength, athough I'm not too sure what the figures mean, but the
indicator bars are close in length . At the moment the signal is -63 dBm and
the noise -79 dBm.

> Run with the 11mbps setting for a while and see how that goes. The
> ahrdware is essentially telling you that this is its optimum speed for
> the conditions - trust it.
>
> You will (I hope) probably find it loses fewer packets and dies less
> often. Internet connection sharing should be completely unaffected by
> this drop in speed.

It does seem better so far.

> Only network file sharing and printing will noticeably be slower - and
> that only matters with BIG files.

Working as it is now is better than not at all.

> Your best bet would be to run a wired connection to the same room as
> the wireless machine and hook up a WAP there. You will get an almost
> perfect signal and may even get 54mbps.

Although kinda defeating the object somewhat

(Yes I know it would solve any large file sharing issues though)

> Let us all know how the experiments go.

Help appreciated.

--
:: Steve Jackson - My site: http://tinyurl.com/iisf
:: Use Amazon? http://tinyurl.com/4kdn to help a preschool charity
:: Gamertag: SteJay AC: Name/town: Stejay/Jacktown
:: "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for Sega." - Brodie (Mallrats)

On 22 Feb 2004 11:07:53 GMT, Steve Jackson
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Would you like a chocolate-covered pretzel Geoff Lane?
>
>> Although you would not get 54mbps it would be ample good enough for
>> the internet.
>
>Yeah, it is just that I wanted the option to stream MP3s etc, and I'd like to
>at least have the option of transferring large files at a decent speed.

Wotth a try though, it's better to 'tweak' a good connection rather
than try and adjust a bad one.

Geoff Lane
Welwyn Hatfield Computer Club - Hertfordshire, UK
www.whcc.co.uk - Online facilities for non locals

On 22 Feb 2004 10:17:19 GMT, Ferger <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:


>You can get a 54mbps connection, by putting the access point right next to
>your machine. This is a theoretical maximum, and performance will drop off
>at distance and with obstructions, I very much doubt that the kit is at
>fault here. There are parts of my house where the connection drops down to
>this kind of level (I have a wireless Pocket PC which gets used all over
>the place) -

My pocketpc's range is hopeless, ok if it is in the same room as the
AP but if not it is very hit and miss.

Geoff Lane
Welwyn Hatfield Computer Club - Hertfordshire, UK
www.whcc.co.uk - Online facilities for non locals

On 22 Feb 2004 11:20:09 GMT, Steve Jackson
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>I am only about 15 feet away from the router, on the same floor, with a solid
>wall and a radiator in between. I don't think the wall and radiator factors
>in but I've mentioned it in case.

Ah, large metal objects, water and wall insulation can all have an
effect on WiFi performance, the manufacturers don't mention that in
the box do they.

Since getting involved in WiFi about nine months ago I was initially
disappointed with the range and posted numerous messages on various
newsgroups about problems.

The replies I got all suggested that the only time you are going to
get anywhere near the performance suggested on the box is in a field
or house with no walls, no radiators and no water tanks.

Geoff Lane
Welwyn Hatfield Computer Club - Hertfordshire, UK
www.whcc.co.uk - Online facilities for non locals