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Wireless Routers for Congested Areas?
An anonymous reader asks: "I have been living close to campus at UW Madison for the past six months or so and have come across a problem. We, along with everyone else in the area, have a wireless router, both a Belkin 54g and a Linksys WRT54G. We have Charter 3 Mbit down/.25 Mbit up cable and 6 guys in our apartment. Just on our block about 15-20 people have routers. We are constantly plagued with problems connecting to the wireless, staying connected, getting connected after rebooting, hibernating, and so forth. We have to reset the cable modem and the router many times a day to get everything rolling again. I am thinking that the router is the problem, because my dad always told me that's why they have twenty dollar routers up to thirty thousand dollar routers. What router can I purchase that will help my situation and will work well in a congested college area?"
.. but you're asking questions, which is good!
We, along with everyone else in the area, have a wireless router, both a Belkin 54g and a Linksys WRT54G.
Why 2 routers? How are they connected? Same SSID? Same channel? One wireless-G router should be enough to cover an apartment. I suspect this is the cause of many of your problems.
We are constantly plagued with problems connecting to the wireless, staying connected, getting connected after rebooting, hibernating, and so forth. We have to reset the cable modem and the router many times a day to get everything rolling again.
You are asking many different questions:
1. Is the cable modem working and getting signal from your ISP?
2. Is the router working and communicating with the cable modem?
3. Is the router working and providing a wireless signal?
4. Are your computers working and connecting via wireless?
To rule out the wireless questions, connect a computer to the router with an ethernet cable and see if you connect to the internet. If you can't, then the problem is #1 or #2.
You say that you are in a congested wireless area due to many other wireless routers. That's a fact of life these days. How good is your signal strength? Can you change your wireless channel to a channel where is less interference?
I am thinking that the router is the problem, because my dad always told me that's why they have twenty dollar routers up to thirty thousand dollar routers.
You are confusing the capabilities of a router with the reliability of a router. Capabilites and reliability do not always correlate with price.
No, it' sonly illegal to go over the maximum power output regulations. As long as you do not combine and modify equipment to operate above regulation, it's legal. That's why you can buy higher dBm antennas in Walmart, they're designed to stay within spec. It's not illegal to boost power at all, it's only boosting power over regulation that's illegal. Here's a link to a Cisco support page listing some specs.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
Your experience is par for the course. Get some CAT5 and your troubles will vanish.
Sort of like saying "SUVs are safer in a collision." Well, yes, if you hit someone smaller, but if everyone owned SUVs their advantage would disappear and we'd just be using more fossil fuels.
I regularly plug in my laptop when I have a lot of stuff to transfer, such as a full backup. Gigabit Ethernet still beats any form of 802.11.
It may seem counterintuitive, but one good way to reduce your interference to your neighbors' WiFi networks is to put more access points in your own house. This is especially true if you can't cover your whole house with a single access point. Above all, resist the antisocial temptation to get a power amplifier. Use the cellular approach instead.
Get more access points, spread them across channels 1, 6 and 11 and sprinkle them around your house. Set them all to the same ESSID and plug them into an Ethernet switch (if the access points have built-in routers, use no more than one so all the access points will be on the same logical Ethernet segment.) Your laptop will automatically hand off to the nearest access point when you move, just like a cell phone.
Even if you can cover your whole house with a single access point, having several reduces your average radio link distance and lets the links operate at a higher average speed. (802.11g runs from 1 megabit/sec up to 54 megabits/sec, depending on signal-to-noise ratio). Most WiFi transmitters run at constant power, so increasing your average data rate reduces your transmission time and the interfering energy you dump onto your neighbors for each megabyte of data you transfer.
Have a chat with your neighbours. You can all invest in a faster connection and a faster router and you can reduce those hundreds of routers down to a few. Hell, just use a few access points, feed the whole area into a single router.
Well, I wouldn't go this route, but you could easily go with A instead of G, then you won't have the cordless phones, microwave, people down the street, etc using the same frequencies. It may not be the cheapest solution, but is probably the best legal solution if you have to stick with wireless. If you want to stick with your wireless G equipment, I would go with directional antennas as they can be bought or made pretty cheap. Also, if you can stick your router in the basement and point the antenna upwards, then it will only receive strong signals from within your building. That should eliminate most of your interference. The best solution in my opinion would be to go with wired, esp when you are sharing all of your 'study materials' you will be able to transfer all of those educational videos a whole lot faster without worries about interference.
It's behavior like this that hurts open source software and hacker friendly hardware. Just because you can, doesn't mean that you should. Besides being a violation of federal law, it encourages the FCC to require tamper-resistance as a condition of type acceptance for more kinds of systems.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
How would anyone know? The neighbors, who will suddenly get interference on THEIR Channel 13? Have you ever tried complaining to the FCC about interference? Good luck:
"However, there is no guarantee that interference will not occur in a particular installation. If this equipment does cause harmful interference to radio or television reception, which can be determined by turning the equipment off and on, the user is encouraged to try to correct the interference by one or more of the following measures:
Reorient or relocate the receiving antenna.
Increase the separation between the equipment and receiver.
Connect the equipment into a different outlet from that the receiver is connected.
Consult your local distributors or an experienced radio/TV technician for help.
Shielded interface cables must be used in order to comply with emission limits."
In other words, DIAF, call someone who cares.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I'm licensed to use that spectrum, you aren't. If interference from illegally modified wi-fi hardware becomes enough of a problem, the FCC will smack you down.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Why not cooperate with your neighbor(s) on a wireless setup?
Prove it. When you can get anything but an 800 number, or a form letter from the FCC, call me. I've personally dealt with this sort of thing - neighbor's HAM was so powerful, I picked up his conversations in the wire to my speakers.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.