On 13 Oct 2005 03:53:36 -0700, "bushtor" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>The reason for my post is that I have one WRT54GS as access point and 6
>of the same box in client mode (Alchemy fw in all). Main point is
>sharing an internet connection. Link distance is not too long but the
>clients experience very intermittent internet access. It can be good
>for a minute and then no throughput for five minutes.
I see no details on the client side or nor indications as to the
environment. How far is "not too long" and are there any obstructions
in the way? Are you in a tall building that overlooks the world
through glass walls? Are you in an industrial environement? Do you
have other 2.4GHz devices in the neighborhood such as cordless phones
or wireless video devices? Do you see the problem? Without an
adequate description of the hardware and RF environment, it's
difficult to even guess what's wrong.
However that's never stopped me from guessing. Sounds like some type
of interference. 5 minutes could be a leaky microwave oven or a
cordless phone. Both are able to successfully interfere with
communications.
My favorite test is to just ping the access point from the client.
I'll assume Windoze XP Home on the client which comes with a rather
insipid ping program. I suggest downloading fping from:
http://www.kwakkelflap.com/fping.html
which offers the sequence numbers the MS removed. This makes lost
packets obvious. Run:
fping 192.168.1.1 -c -t 5000
which will ping the access point once every 5 seconds (to not be too
obnoxious). What you're looking for are radical increases in latency
which indicates retransmissions caused by corrupted packets. In
extreme cases, the TCP will time out and the packet will show as lost.
If you run it on all 6 client mode radios at the same time, it will
show the extent of the problem. Do NOT be suprised if you find that
one or two have a severe packet loss problem while others work just
fine. That means the intereference is affecting the client, not the
main access point.
As for monitoring the signal strength and S/N ratio, this is best done
at the client end. For the WRT54G in client mode, that's:
wl noise
wl rssi (receive signal strength)
wl tssi (transmit signal strength)
wl rssidump
wl channel_qa (requires setting channel_qa_start).
I don't know which of these will yield the best numbers, but methinks
it should be easy enough to try. If you want SNMP OID's, I'll have to
dig them out later when I'm in the office.
>Are there any special issues with the WRT54 as access point and the
>same box in client mode?
Yes. Some of the wl comands don't work.
>Since there are onlky 6 clients I thought
>this should work well....?
The number of clients have nothing to do with interference problems.
--
Jeff Liebermann
(E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060
http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
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