Wireless suddenly flaky - thoughts?

I have a problem that seems depressingly similar to others reported
here recently, although not similar enough that I think the
answers are the same. I have some thoughts about how to proceed but
would like any informed opinion on what might be most fruitful
before I put too much time into what may be a pointless investigation.

I have been using a wireless network at home (in conjunction with
a wired one) for just over 18 months and until last Saturday
it worked flawlessly. It is made up of a Binatone 802.11b+ WAP
and is used regularly by one desktop with a Belkin 802.11b PCI
card, one laptop with a Binatone PCMCIA card which came with the access
point and two with a Belkin 802.11b PCMCIA card. Occasional
family visitors also use their laptops.

Last Saturday one of the laptops (with the Belkin card) had
great problems connecting to it, but eventually succeeded.
I wasn't able to find out more about this as my wife only
mentioned it after she had got it working. I then noticed
severe problems with my laptop which uses the Binatone card.
It was failing to do anything useful in a part of the house
where it usually had no problems, and reporting occasional
disconnects. Closer investigation showed that it would
connect, and report signal strengths and link quality between
90% - 100%, but the link quality would then rapidly decline
over 10 seconds or so until it reached zero. This persists for
a few seconds and then the cycle would start again. The desktop
machine showed similar symptoms. They persisted throughout
Sunday. For a few hours on Monday, all appeared to be OK
again and then the same symptoms reappeared.

Looking at the access point management pages and logs wasn't
very informative, except that the access point seemed to be
restarting itself fairly frequently. I had not observed this
behaviour before.

There isn't any new equipment in the house (such as microwave
or DECT phone) that wasn't present before. One thought is that
a near neighbour may have acquired a wireless network and there's
interference. I'm going to try asking around, if only because I
think we all could do with coordinating things like what channel
we use. I was also going to try varying the channel I use to see
if it makes a difference, but I'm not sure if there's a sensible
strategy to choose for this (I currently use channel 6.)

The other thought is that the WAP is suffering some sort of attack
on its web management interface which is causing it grief. It has
a real (i.e. non-NATed) IP address and one of its flaws when it
was working was that the web interface would seize up after a while.
That is, the network was OK but you couldn't get a connection
from the web management interface unless you power-cycled the
device. I'm going to monitor the wired LAN to see if I can
spot any evidence of this.

Any other thoughts on what might be up? Any other suggestions as
to what I might investigate ?

All ideas appreciated.

Soni tempori elseu romani yeof helsforo nisson ol sefini ill des Tue, 16 Aug
2005 17:14:39 +0100, sefini jorgo geanyet des mani yeof do
uk.comp.home-networking, yawatina tan reek esk Kevin Ashley
<(E-Mail Removed)> fornis do marikano es bono tan el:

>Any other thoughts on what might be up? Any other suggestions as
>to what I might investigate ?

Maybe one of your neighbours has just bought a video sender device?

deKay
--
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On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 17:14:39 +0100, Kevin Ashley <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

> I was also going to try varying the channel I use to see
>if it makes a difference, but I'm not sure if there's a sensible
>strategy to choose for this (I currently use channel 6.)

try channel 1, as most stuff seems to default to 6 (middle of US
speeds) or 11. 1 has the lowest frequency and hence goes a tad
further. Otherwise try 13 - well away from where you started and not
available on some kit (US only goes up to 11).

Phil
--
Remember - Global Warming is only a weather forecast :-)

deKay wrote:
>
> Maybe one of your neighbours has just bought a video sender device?
>

Good thought - I had forgotten they used the same bit of the radio
spectrum. The timing fits well too. I'm not too familiar with
how controllable they are - do they also have the ability to select
channels to broadcast on or do they use a wider bit of spectrum than
802.11b kit ?

I ask because my neighbours are generally a cooperative bunch
of folks and I'm sure will be willing to cooperate in a planned
scheme for using different bits of spectrum for wireless networking
and video stuff and anything else relevant if I can find
a technically feasible solution.

Phil Thompson wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 17:14:39 +0100, Kevin Ashley <(E-Mail Removed)>
> wrote:
>
>>I was also going to try varying the channel I use to see
>>if it makes a difference, but I'm not sure if there's a sensible
>>strategy to choose for this (I currently use channel 6.)
>
> try channel 1, as most stuff seems to default to 6 (middle of US
> speeds) or 11.

I'll give that a go tonight. deKay's suggestion that a video
sender might be responsible seems quite likely, and I'm not
going to spot that with any wireless network survey utilities.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Soni tempori elseu romani yeof helsforo nisson ol sefini ill des Wed, 17 Aug
2005 10:47:30 +0100, sefini jorgo geanyet des mani yeof do
uk.comp.home-networking, yawatina tan reek esk Kevin Ashley
<(E-Mail Removed)> fornis do marikano es bono tan el:

>Good thought - I had forgotten they used the same bit of the radio
>spectrum. The timing fits well too. I'm not too familiar with
>how controllable they are - do they also have the ability to select
>channels to broadcast on

The ones I have seen (cheap ones in Asda) don't have any settings on them at
all, which mean you might have to alter your side of things.

> or do they use a wider bit of spectrum than
>802.11b kit ?

I don't know. It might even vary from box to box.

deKay
--
+ Lofi Gaming: www.lofi-gaming.org.uk [Gamertag: deKay 01]
|- Gaming Diary: www.lofi-gaming.org.uk/diary/
|- My computer runs at 3.5MHz and I'm proud of that
|- CSS Crap Games Comp 2005: http://www.lofi-gaming.org.uk/speccy/cgc2005/

Kevin Ashley wrote:
> Phil Thompson wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 17:14:39 +0100, Kevin Ashley <(E-Mail Removed)>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I was also going to try varying the channel I use to see
>>> if it makes a difference, but I'm not sure if there's a sensible
>>> strategy to choose for this (I currently use channel 6.)
>>
>>
>> try channel 1, as most stuff seems to default to 6 (middle of US
>> speeds) or 11.
>
>
> I'll give that a go tonight.

In case anyone else is interested, this does seem to have solved the
problem for now. The access point has stopped rebooting regularly
and reliable contact has been restored for the 3 machines using it
regularly. Now to coordinate with the neighbours to see if we can
prevent this happening again in the near future...

Thanks for all the suggestions offered.