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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.?"
or get a different antenna. :-)
The router/nic will listen to whatever is loudest. Go pick up a bigger antenna. 7dbi should do it.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
> or get a different antenna. :-)
> The router/nic will listen to whatever is loudest. Go pick up a bigger antenna. 7dbi should do it.
Yes, because if everyone got a bigger antenna that would go a long way towards solving wifi interference problems... genius man, pure genius.
The unofficial
It could be due to huge numbers of people "stealing" his wireless. No, really--those cheapie consumer broadband routers don't fare well with more than a handful of simultaneous users. I'll bet a lot of people are turning on their laptops and finding that wonderful little connected icon in the bottom right and not thinking twice. Even with in-room connections, sometimes it's hard to get your ass off that bed :)
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Can you point me to an exchangable antenna selection for my cordless phone? Umm, yeah, I did not think so...
A bigger antenna could solve his problem within his dorm room because it will reduce the interference with the phones that are stuck with their little antennas.
This device is the simplest solution to your problem.
No, I'm not kidding.
As someone who lives in a dorm at Rutgers University...
Ok, The huge stereos? Ok. You've got a point there. I don't need to share my music preference with people down the hall. I *do* have a THX rated surround sound system on my computer though. Why? Games. Movies. I want them to sound good. I live in a box. When I watch a movie, I don't want to feel like I'm watching a movie... in a BOX.
The wireless? My dorm is broken up into 10 smaller "houses" attatched by tunnels and such, and each house has it's own lounge. Sometimes, either if my roommate needs the room to.. uh... "work out", or if I want to study in peace and my roommate is playing a game or music or such. With my wireless I can bring my powerbook to the lounge and still have ethernet. Yes there are wired ports in the lounge but the infastructure is a bit of a pain in the ass if you don't own JUST a laptop.
And cordless phones? Yeah. They're useful. Say I order food from one of the local delivery places, and I need to run out to a friend's room real quick or I'm in said house lounge. I can still get that call. And I really don't get the whole "interference" thing. In my room I can see at least 5 access points besides mine, 3 locked down, (fairly well I might add, but I managed to get in, just for shits and giggles), 2 wide open, and there are 2 with SSID off (airsnort rules). Mines locked down to rediculous extremes (uses RADIUS server for auth), but the point is, with all these points around, and 2.4Ghz cordless phones... I don't have any interference. There is no degredation in speed, and in theory the fact that every room has a microwave should bring all the wireless here to a crawl whenever someone wants a hot pocket.
Perhaps their school just has shitty shielding in the walls? 6 inches of concrete in each wall does nicely here.
Viva La Revolucion! Buy a Mac!
Yup, I see where you're coming from. But I suspect there's more to life than just pleasure (I believe them there hedonists disagree with that statement). The fact this guy paid his way thru college working at McD*****s demonstrates more discipline than I had during my college years. Having said that, I wouldn't have done it any different - each to their own.
Stuck down a hole! In the middle of the night! With an owl!
This was obviously years ago. In this day and time, tuition and other fees even at state schools are so high, and minimum wage is still low, that it is no longer possible to work your way through school. It is admirable that people are willing to work so hard at the same time they are getting an education. Unfortunately now, all that seems to get for students is a lot of debt that they will be paying off forever.
Right.. Someone who needs a $6 ethernet cable from Cables R Us should instead buy a $15 bulk spool of CAT5 cable, a $10 box of connectors, and a $15 crimper tool to put the connectors on the cable. And then they can use the box of leftover cable as a nice footstool, and the crimper makes a nice paperweight.
Sheesh.
Ideally, the jammer should output more of a noise than a continuous signal. It'll look more natural and/or unintentional.
However, if you want something spectacular, you want to use the standard 110v power line for your input voltage, and you want to use a reflector to ensure that the signal doesn't spread out in all directions. Just make sure your WIFI stuff isn't plugged in at the same time. Also make sure your life insurance is paid up and/or you have a very fast getaway car.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)