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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.?"
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)
Urge to post... fading... fading... RISING!... fading... fading... gone.
First: I'd guess that some of the interference is coming from other 802.11b/g gear, not necessarily cordless phones. It all defaults to channel 6 from the factory, so try 1 or 11. Or load the ETSI firmware and use 14, and just don't tell the FCC.
Second: Try some FHSS gear, it seems tougher in noisy environments than DSSS. The old Proxim RangeLan equipment is cheap.
Third: Get out of 2.4GHz entirely. Go go 5GHz with 802.11a, or 900MHz with older Aironet gear.
Fourth: It's a dorm room, and worse than that, it's an MSU dorm room. What is it, 4x8 feet? Stick with wired. Get a real patch cord that uses stranded conductors, as the solid stuff is too stiff and will stress the connectors.
I work in a noc doing cpe (customer provided equipment) support for small companies in pop in downtown Toronto. Since we've introduced cpe enabled wifi, I've turned on snmp polling for stats on connectivity, signal strength etc, and its open my eyes as to where things can go wrong with wifi in a chaotic enviroment. We have about 64 + access points in a building that is less that 300 feet long, and 80 feet wide, that is two stories, and we have no radio interference. 99% of the cases of lost ip transit to wireless endpoints like laptops, bridges or a/ps were due to either Trojans/spyware/malware/viruses swamping the cpe's wan interface, nat process or someone cracking wep and swamping the connection with Kazaa traffic. Either way, I suggest you stick a network sniffer like snort on the wan ethernet interface of the dlink inline (an old p200 w/ 128 megs of ram and an 8gig disk makes a great sniffer, running linux, freebsd or openbsd), and watch what traffic patterns you see. Your son will be able to see what traffic is being used, and will have the tools he needs to take responsiblity for his own connection. Isn't that what great geek dads are supposed to do for their kids ? It might save you a few rolls of tinfoil.
My god, you live in a *dorm* and you need wireless networking?
You're the wifi version of the idiots I lived next to in college with GIGANTIC STEREOS jammed into little 8ftx8ft rooms. Did you know ALL music sounds the same when filtered through the low-pass filter known as "the walls"? I didn't!
Yeah, when you're in college, you're king of your world and entitled to everything. Whatever.
Besides, with the wireless, you're just letting that freaky Linux guy next door who wears a cloak see what kind of porn you like to hit it with.
You don't need a cordless phone either, by the way. You live in a damn CLOSET!
(Oops, this was the guy's dad. Adjust pronouns appropriately.)