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Cooling your Access Point?

Posted by Cliff on from the WLANs-dislike-heat-ya-know dept.

CmdrChillupa asks: "Summer's here in the US. I don't really mind the heat and I've lived my whole life without AC. Just gotten used to having fresh air instead of pre-processed. There's only one problem with this whole theory. After a long day at work I get home and go to do a little surfing on my PowerBook and my WLAN is down. I have a Siemens Speedstream 2624 Wireless Router that from all appearances dislikes the heat more than I do. I've gotten into a habit of holding it in front of a fan for a few minutes everyday when I get home, I thought the fridge might be a bit too humid for it's electronics. Anybody have any solutions aside from a alum-alloy-peltier-inter-cooled-turbo-charged-9 monstrosity?"

6 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Same as SMC by ralphb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I believe that the Siemens Speedstream is hardware equivalent of the SMC AWBR wireless router I have. Siemans runs their own version of firmware on it, and it's supposedly a lot more stable than SMC's firmware. The SMC firmware is so bad, in fact, that I gave up on the SMC as a router because it kept disconnecting my cable modem connection every few hours and required a reboot to reconnect. Not a Hardware problem, they swapped it out for me once. I got myself a Linksys (which runs perfectly) and I'm using the SMC as just a wireless access point. I just disable DHCP and assign it a static IP. Anyway...

    The unit is very heat sensitive. When I first installed it, I had trouble getting a stable connection about 30 feet away through one floor and one wall. So, I set the unit up on styrofoam feet about one inch high and set up a 4" cooling fan to blow across the unit. Big difference! The signal in my kitchen is now five by five. I don't think you need to do any extreme cooling tricks to get the improvement.

    Ralph

  2. Vertical PCB by redelm · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Mount the unit so the circuit board is vertical. This will greatly improve cooling by natural convection.

    Make sure there is enough vent area at the bottom and top of the case as mounted. Drill some if needed.

  3. refrigerator humidity by menscher · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Any reason you think the fridge will be humid? Everyone knows that air-conditioning removes humidity... and a fridge is just a big air conditioner. The hard part will be getting wires into the fridge for power/networking. Also, I'm not sure the wireless will work so well from within a fridge (think of shielding effects).

  4. In the fridge by Tintivilus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I thought the fridge might be a bit too humid for it's electronics.

    If it's too humid in the fridge, it's waaay too humid in the heat. Cold air doesn't hold as much moisture as warm air; this is why a lot of people store ground coffee in the fridge or freezer. You can put it in the fridge without any problems, you just need to watch out for condensation when you take it out of its cool, dry place into the warm, moist ambient air.

    On the other hand, your RF performance might suffer by putting your AP in a big metal box :)

  5. dremell tool and fans by BenTheDewpendent · · Score: 2, Insightful

    cut a small hole in the enclousure (near or over the hot spot, if it can even be found), big enough for a small ish (think 5-9volt) fan and solder the power leds to the power connection in the AP then attach fan. or dont use a fan and just make some holes to help with the ventelation.

    Thanks if you cant move it to a cooler area.

  6. remove the cover by BigBir3d · · Score: 2, Insightful

    assuming it is in a relatively dust free environment.

    or you could do the dremel thing... but i would use a smaller fan (maybe chipset fan instead of a case fan).