Three different wireless brands and still problems

Hello all,

Hopefully you can help me with this, as it's been a painful month of trying
to get a wireless network set up. I consider myself a fairly advanced
computer user, but this is just driving me crazy.

I started with Linksys, using the 4 port wireless router to share out my
cable connection to one directly connected computer and two wireless
computers, one in the basement and one on the second floor - my WAP is on
the first floor. My computer upstairs worked perfectly (for the first week),
while I couldn't get the computer downstairs to stay connected, as it would
drop connection sometimes every five minutes, sometimes every hour, from
between 10 seconds to 2 hours.

I messed around a WHOLE lot with Wireless Zero access, such as disabling it
once connected. This fixed the ping spike problem I was having upstairs,
where every minute I would get a 3000MS ping spike. Once I disabled wireless
zero I didn't get this anymore. However, the basement computer still wasn't
working. Then after a week, my upstairs computer starting having problems
too. So I returned Linksys.

Next, I got the D-Link products. I messed with these for three hours, and
had horrible speed problems, where web pages took forever to load. I believe
the ping time to my router was causing this, since it was very erratic. I
returned those the next day.

Currently, I'm using SMC. It worked perfectly on all three computers for
three days straight, but since then I've been having pretty much the same
problems as with the Linksys products, where the basement computer never
works, and my computer upstairs works but will still disconnect, though
these seems to mostly happen when I'm not using it.

I have tried about half of the channels so far, and I don't believe that
seems to be making any different. I have a few 2.4GHZ phones, but I don't
think that's a problem because one channel would cause my wireless to
disconnect when the phone rang. However, as soon as I changed from that
channel, the wireless didn't seem to be effected by it.

The main thing I don't get is the signal strength for the basement computer
varies between good and low. I would think that it would show just 1 green
bar for the connection status if I was losing connection because of the
signal strength.

I'm really, really stuck here, and would kiss the ground someone walked on
if they could help me with this. Thanks!!!

- Jon

Jon H wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> Hopefully you can help me with this, as it's been a painful month of
> trying to get a wireless network set up. I consider myself a fairly
> advanced computer user, but this is just driving me crazy.
>
> I started with Linksys, using the 4 port wireless router to share out
> my cable connection to one directly connected computer and two
> wireless computers, one in the basement and one on the second floor -
> my WAP is on the first floor. My computer upstairs worked perfectly
> (for the first week), while I couldn't get the computer downstairs to
> stay connected, as it would drop connection sometimes every five
> minutes, sometimes every hour, from between 10 seconds to 2 hours.
>
> I messed around a WHOLE lot with Wireless Zero access, such as
> disabling it once connected. This fixed the ping spike problem I was
> having upstairs, where every minute I would get a 3000MS ping spike.
> Once I disabled wireless zero I didn't get this anymore. However, the
> basement computer still wasn't working. Then after a week, my
> upstairs computer starting having problems too. So I returned Linksys.
>
> Next, I got the D-Link products. I messed with these for three hours,
> and had horrible speed problems, where web pages took forever to
> load. I believe the ping time to my router was causing this, since it
> was very erratic. I returned those the next day.
>
> Currently, I'm using SMC. It worked perfectly on all three computers
> for three days straight, but since then I've been having pretty much
> the same problems as with the Linksys products, where the basement
> computer never works, and my computer upstairs works but will still
> disconnect, though these seems to mostly happen when I'm not using it.
>
> I have tried about half of the channels so far, and I don't believe
> that seems to be making any different. I have a few 2.4GHZ phones,
> but I don't think that's a problem because one channel would cause my
> wireless to disconnect when the phone rang. However, as soon as I
> changed from that channel, the wireless didn't seem to be effected by
> it.
>
> The main thing I don't get is the signal strength for the basement
> computer varies between good and low. I would think that it would
> show just 1 green bar for the connection status if I was losing
> connection because of the signal strength.
>
> I'm really, really stuck here, and would kiss the ground someone
> walked on if they could help me with this. Thanks!!!
>
> - Jon

Run this one hour test: shut down (disconnect) all of your wireless
telephones. Turn off all of your cell phones. Do not use your
microwave. For luck, tinfoil hat.

Report back on the results.

Q