1. Home
  2. Wireless Networking
  3. Troubleshooting wierd wireless problem

Troubleshooting wierd wireless problem

Hi All, I'm stumped and looking for help. I had wireless set up in my house working fine for months using a D-Link Wireless router with a Hawking signal booster. Then one day no wireless devices would connect; or they would connect but not stay connected. I removed the signal booster and the problem persisted. I bought separate router a new AP (Trendnet) and it worked but clients would initially connect at 54mbs and within minutes the signal strength reported by Windows XP would be 1mb. This was seen on all laptops of various vendors. No wireless devices can stay connected for more than a few minutes. I bought another AP (Netgear) and still no clients can connect and stay connected for more than a couple of minutes or can not even connect at all. I've tried every channel 1-11; I'v had a laptop 10 inches from the AP antenna and it makes no difference. I'm running Netstubmler on Windows XP and it shows -50db fairly consistantly, but no clients can connect. Any ideas? Any other analysis I can do to find the problem? Some interference? How can I tell? How do I find it?

Reply to
snowdogdb
Loading thread data ...

Great information, Jeff. Thank you. I'll have to ask around about the spectrum analyzer.

Reply to
snowdogdb

I'll guess interference of some sort. The failure to operate 10 inches away is not exactly typical, but possible if the interference is strong enough. That happened to a friend that found a pole top mounted mesh network repeater mounted very near his house running a 1 watt xmitter. Absolutely nothing wireless would work. Trying to find the owner was deemed impossible so he just climbed the pole, pulled the plug, and waited for someone to show up. That worked and the mesh monster was moved to a less obnoxious location.

I think what needs to happen first is a sanity check. Drag your existing wireless contrivance (DLink, Trendnet, laptop) to a radically different location. Verify that they work normally away from the alleged interference. Keep the booster out of the picture as it causes more problems and complications than it fixes. If it works normally away from your location, then it's surely interference from something. If it fails, then you may have some type of defective hardware, but methinks this is unlikely.

Finding the interference is going to be rough. You have already tried Netstumbler and that didn't show anything. Try to find a Linux LiveCD with Kismet. This is what I use:

formatting link
will show access points that have disabled SSID broadcasting. However, it's a huge 500Mbyte download and somewhat of a learning ordeal if you don't know Linux.

The right way is to use a spectrum analyzer. Bug some of the local hams, comm shops, and radio station people. None of these will loan you their expensive instruments but often will do a site survey for you to be helpful. I do it all too often (like today) in order to sniff out sources of interference. Incidentally, today's culprit was a 5 watt wireless camera owned by a TV station that was in town for a big foot race. Yes, 5 watts. Sigh. In the past, I found one of these abominations:

formatting link
also what I think may have been one of these:
formatting link
and military only, my ass.

If you are really desperate and have lots of money, I could use one of these spectrum analyzers:

formatting link
formatting link
current spectrum analyzer weights about 50lbs and is not exactly portable.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.