Hi wireless fans... long time listener, first time caller...
We've enjoyed a nice wireless LAN with a Linksys BEFW11S4 (firmware v
1.45z, an 802.11b router) providing a gateway to cable internet, serving a few laptop PC's: (1) Windows XP home, internal Broadcom 802.11g adapter (2) Windows XP home, external Linksys WPC11 (802.11b) adapter (3) Windows XP pro, internal LanExpress 802.11b adapter (4) Windows XP home, internal 802.11g adapter .... and a couple wired clientsThe router is configured for MAC address filtering, but no WEP.
Everything was groovy for almost a year. Typical throughput was on the order of 1200 bps on all clients. Recently, pc (1) started getting terrible throughput, say 120 kbps, rather spontaneously. I tried the usual suspects: reset the router, reboot PC's, reinstall drivers on pc (1), reset TCP/IP, all to no avail. All the other PC's meanwhile were fine. Digging deeper, I did a "repair" install of Windows on (1). No joy.
Since PC (1)'s throughput's rate was killed so suddenly I suspected either some crazy software was installed, the internal adapter on (1) was going south, or there was something screwed with TCP/IP. I could not find any suspicious software on (1), so I installed (and plugged in) the Linksys external "b" adapter in (1). It worked great: 1200 bps.
Thinking this confirmed my suspicions about the internal adapter on (1), I bought a new external Linksys g adapter for (1). To my amazement, not only did the throughput on (1) NOT improve with this new adapter, installing the same adapter on PC's (2) and (3) also brought them down to pitiful throughputs.
So my conclusion is, this Linksys BEFW11S4 (802.11b) is not really compatible with some 801.11g adapters, including some Linksys wireless adapters.
I've read some other posts, mostly old, that poo-poo the idea of incompatibility between b and g equipment. Any ideas here? I will probably acquire a "g" WAP in the near future -- in part to test my theory, and in part to satiate PC (1) who has terrible throughput at the moment...