Wireless Issues Using S6231?

I recently got my S6231 from P1. It's a great lappy, and I am overall happy with it. Only thing that would be nice Imho would be status lights on the outside of the case, and of course a backlit lcd.

I am having connection issues. I read a lot of posts over at notebook forums about problems with the 2200BG wireless card. I contacted Ivan at P1, he seems to think my router (Linksys WRT54G, ver.2, with ver.3 firmware upgrade) does not support power polling. I live in an apartment and my wireless connection drops, on the average of twice and hour, or signal is only "good" at a distance of about 20-25ft from the router.

I have the notebook and router set to channel 11, ssid is not broadcast, using WPA-TKIP encryption, MAC filtering turned off.

I have Power Management on my notebook set to "highest", and being only an average of 25ft. from the router I get an average of 2 connection drops and hour and only average a "good" connection.

How do I set my wireless card so it won't search for other wireless networks nearby. I have gone into "adapter settings" and have checked each nearby connection to add to exclusion list. Is there another way I am supposed to do this? Is it better to use the Intel or Windows for the wireless manager?

Should I get maybe a range extender or high gain antennas before getting a new router or wireless card?? I want to make sure I have all my bases covered before I get a new card or router.

Any other suggestions?

 

I think windows wireless manager is better. I don't have a linksys, but i can tell you that whenever i'm home, i turn on my wireless and it auto connects preferred network.

Also as for wireless range, you might want to check the driver, there's a thread in network forum, have a look at it, they posting new intel drivers.

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S7011 - *1.6mHZ*, *512MB DDR 333*, *Hitachi Travelstar 60G 7200RPM*, *Toshiba CDRW Combo Drive*, *14.1' SuperFine*, *Fingerprint Scanner*, *Intel Pro 2200 B/G*, *Logitec Black Optical Mouse*

 

> contacted Ivan at P1, he seems to think my router
> (Linksys WRT54G, ver.2, with ver.3 firmware upgrade)
> does not support power polling.

What is power polling?

> I have the notebook and router set to channel 11, ssid
> is not broadcast, using WPA-TKIP encryption, MAC
> filtering turned off.

My method was to get it working with basic WEP64 security then add MAC filtering. I had ssid broadcast off, but then had to turn it on again. My older dlink doesn't support wpa so I'll have to get by with WEP64 key and MAC filtering.

> Is it better to use the Intel or Windows for the
> wireless manager?

Neither are perfect.

> I want to make sure I have all my bases covered
> before I get a new card or router.

Getting a new card would be admitting defeat and I'd hate to see you have to do that. There seems like a zillion settings that can be tried, many changes seem logical, but they have absolutely no effect whatsoever. It's a process of elimination until you find the one thing that's causing the drops. The driver disk did have newer drivers on it, including chipset. I installed everything that was newer.

It would be nice if Intel made a wifi router. That way there would be no finger pointing as it would be intel talking to intel. Just for kicks can you go to someplace that has free WIFI and see you experience drops? Cause if you don't get drops there, then it would stand to reason that the problem is not in your 6231.

I ended up with "Wireless Connection 3" as I deinstalled, reinstalled stuff but I finally got it to work so well that I deleted all the WIFI icons and info bublets from the tray. Returning from standby I see the wifi icon with the red x for about two seconds before it disappears indicating a connection.

Good Luck!

-David

 

Thanks guys. There are so many variables, like David said, it's hard for me to admit defeat. I want to keep trying. I did find the latest intel drivers (9.0.1.21) on IBM website. and it seems to be working better. It's kind of weird, it says "Aquiring network address", but I'm connected to it browsing. Signal strength seems to be better and I haven't had any conection drops. I guess only time will tell.

I guess power polling is supposed to be something having to do with the battery management of the card. I wouldn't see where it would affect my wireless signal if my router didn't support it, because I was having the probs connected to ac too.

 

have you tried setting different channels on the router (other than 11)? That would be my first thought - you might find one w/ less interference. (I have the same router and it works great, though w/ slightly different settings.)

Fujitsu S6220 1.7GHz : 768MB RAM : 5K80 HDD : CD-RW/DVD

 

I have the exact same problems with my S6231. Its not a channel issue.

 

In case someone didn't read the other thread, my solution was to turn off everything proprietary in the router. When I did that, the connection drops stopped. WIFI router companies don't even wait for the IEEE ink to dry on a standard before they start embellishing it so that their router, used in conjunction with their pc card, pci adapter, or usb adapter is faster than the standard.

Just for a plain old 802.11b router, I had to disable 4x mode and 22mbps as a transmission speed. Granted, the technology should be smart enough to handshake at the lowest common denominator and maintain that connection, when dealing with computers, the term "braindead" frequently comes to mind.

-David

 

I had that problem too. What stopped it was, when it was acquring addres go into properties of that cnnection. wait for a second. then click OK, it should say you are connected.

I couldn't solve this porblem, so i formatted my notebook. took me 5 sleepless night searching on google, but nothing came up

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S7011 - *1.6mHZ*, *512MB DDR 333*, *Hitachi Travelstar 60G 7200RPM*, *Toshiba CDRW Combo Drive*, *14.1' SuperFine*, *Fingerprint Scanner*, *Intel Pro 2200 B/G*, *Logitec Black Optical Mouse*