Wireless Headache

I live in a dormitory with 100 people with wirless routers on all four of the floors. In the buildings around me there are another 900 people with the same situation. My room is approximately 20 feet from the router, but the internet is unuseable during the day because it constantly disconnects. I was wondering if there is anything I can do on my end, since I don't control the network or router. I'm using a wirless G network card, but I can't see the name on the router so I don't know what brand it is.

Probably nothing can be done, but it couldn't hurt to ask.

 

take alook at ur device configuration (network environment, wireless, properties, advanced) and see if ur RTS threshold is already set to 2347 and ur Power Saving MOde is OFF)

some reference reading:
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/1445641

an up.to.date wlan driver cannot hurt either

cheers ...

 

you might be able to increase the transmit power for the wireless card. Do you know how to find those under the card's properties?

 

d'oh...too late by seconds!!

 

another tip:
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/3412051

u guys can get together and invest in something like that

cheers ...

 

I have the latest drivers, my RTS Threshold is set to 2347, and the power saver mode is disabled.

Are there any other settings that I can screw around with so my connection won't be dropped so often? What would chagning the mode from mixed to 802.11b or 54G do? Or enabling frame bursting? What about changing Premable mode to Long Tx preamble? Would screwing around with the Fragmentation Threshold help?

There's hardly anyone around at the moment (long weekend and everyone is gone home) so it's hard to figure out what the changes I make are doing.

 

don't forget to adjust the transmit power if yoru driver lets you...

 

Oh, forgot to mention, I turned the transmit power up to its highest setting (54mbs) too.

 

cool....

so, ok...the other settings should be fine for now. Don't wanna change too much at a time...

If your card has a "mixed mode protection" setting...set that to "CTS-to-self" mode. That might be what needs to be changed. If the name for the setting is something different just look for a setting that mentions CTS-RTS.

I am a little rusty at network support but maybe we can puzzle a solution out for ya...if you can roll with me a bit.

BTW, have you updated to the latest drivers for your card? What brand/model is it? That way people can research anything specific to your card...

 

oh, yeah, if your card has any "special" super speed modes make sure that is disabled too.

 

I have a Linksys G Notebook adpater (WPC54G). It doesn't have super seeder mode and I don't see anything that resembles CTS-RTS.

 

cool.

Actually that card can be a bit problematic. I had one that worked fine for about a year then actually started doing exactly what yours is doing. And btw, it does have a SpeedBooster mode they call it. You want to be sure that is not enabled as it can cause connection problems because it's a proprietary mode as almost all of those sort of things are...not to worry you will not lose any speed disabling the mode.

Do you happen to have a different wifi card you can try out? If you do and the connection drops stop then I would suspect the card is overheating (that is what they tended to do over time) causing the connection to drop.

 

Mine doesn't have speed booster. My other wireless card doesn't work with the network because it doesn't have WAP.

I don't think it is overheating because whenever people are gone (like this weekend) the connection works way better than during the middle of the week when everyone is using the connection. So are there any settings that can be changed to help when interference is a problem.

 

ok...wired about the SpeedBooster must have been before they released the revision with the SpeedBooster (which never did work for me... )

I'll dig up the settings list and see what might work. But from knowing that when there are less people it does work OK then it is the network congestion casuing the problem...that is why I thought about the CTS/RTS setting...I forget what it was called on that card (it was almost 3yrs ago I used it... )

 

btw you mean WEP right? Not WAP?

 

I remember now I had the 54GS not the 54G...

Anyway, I see there are seven revisions of that card. That means you might have the wrong drivers by accident? Here is the download page for them. You just need to select the correct version number for the card you have. I did not go far enough into the site to see if the drivers are the same for each card.

Sorry for the back tracking to the driver but am just trying to make sure you have the newest drivers...especially since this line of cards does have a history of dropping connections frequently.

 

I got the update off of the cd that came with the wireless card and besides, the the latest updates don't really add much anyway. Yeah, I meant my other wireless card doesn't support WPA network authentication. Thanks for the help so far.

 

well, ok. I guess I am out of ideas...sorry.

Since you don't feel the drivers are worth installing there really is nothing more I can offer to help you. As I mentioned I had the same issue with the 54gs and the 54g also has a history of issues with randomly dropping just the internet connection yet appearing to remain connected to the router. Whether this is an issue with congestion, simply interference with the signal or issues with the driver or software nobody seems to know.

I guess there is one other option and that is to let XP manage the wireless instead of the Linksys app and see if that helps in any way.

Best of luck...

 

Unfortunately I had to get Xp to manage the network to use the connection. Thanks for all your help, I think I might get DSL in the near future since wireless is a lost cause.