Escaping WiFi Interference In The Modern Dorm Room?

j.cherney writes "I recently moved my son up to a dorm at Michigan State University. We set up a wireless router (D-link) and everything worked well-until the rest of the dorm moved in. Now he is getting intermittent outages which I am quite sure is related to the large numbers of cordless phones on the 2.4ghz frequency. So my question to everyone is: Is there anything that I can do to make wireless work in this environment? Obviously I'm not willing to buy everyone in the dorm a new cordless phone! Is one brand more resistant to interference than another? Is there a filter than can be installed? Or is he S.O.L.?"

Comments

Suggestions...

[CommanderData]

1) Switch to 802.11a (in the 5.4Ghz range, so the cordless phones will not bother it)

OR

2) Wallpaper the dorm room with tinfoil (has the added benefit of blocking government mind control rays)

Not much you can do...

[ForestGrump]

I'm a 3rd year junior, I've since moved off campus but this is my suggestions.

1. The, IMHO,most logical suggestion. A dorm room isn't that big, buy a 50 foot cable. If you insist on keeping a wireless network around, try going for 11a equip. Kinda hard to find but a week or 2 ago, worst buy...er i mean bestbuy had a sale for a dual band 11a/b/g router.

2. See if there is a campus wireless, and if it covers the dorm areas. If yes, convince EVERYONE to kill their AP and use the campus wireless. As for the phones, not much you can do if you're not buying everyone a new phone.

3. You could try a game of "my transmitter is more powerful than yours" and use ext antennas to put out a stronger signal...but not that practical.

Grump

Re:Question

[His name cannot be s]

> Sadly Outta Luck

Really? Seriously, I've always heard/said "Shit outta luck" , which really doesn't make any more sense, except that there is a reason to abbreviate it. Once you say it a million times tho' it doesn't seem to be anything odd.

Not that I'd claim my version is the authority however.

Tragedy of the commons

[OldMiner]

You probably already read the AUP for MSUnet. It specifically addresses the issue of NAT devices, a common concern at universities. The issue is that normally a person must register their MAC on the network to gain access. Then any nefarious activity that occurs on the network can be tracked to the individual user who registered that MAC address. For now, let's ignore the possibility of being able to change the MAC address on some ethernet cards.

By introducing a NAT'd device, you open an entry point to the network to anyone, even those not with proper access, and you rely on the good will of these nameless souls not to do bad things in your name. So if anyone ever becomes evil while connected to your basepoint, it becomes your responsibility to deny access to your AP or remove it from the network.