Netstumbler and SMC2532W-B

I'm hoping someone might have insights or suggestions for what I am seeing.

I recently picked up an SMC2532W-B wireless card (if it helps, I think this is the same as a Z-Com 325HP card). I'm a ham and wanted to do some experiments with it. I bought it because it has antenna connectors and

200 mW output power. I want to hook it up to some antennas and see how far I can go.

I was thinking I could use the signal strength from netstumber to see if one antenna was better than another. Today I was just looking at some random stuff at home with netstumbler and the signal strength seems to be behaving in a way that makes it very un-useful for my purpose.

I started netstumbler here at home. It immediately found my AP and 4 other nets from neighbors. After a minute or so, the other nets greyed out and only mine showed a strong signal. Looking at the signal graph mine was steady at about -55 dB and the others showed no signal.

I cut my AP output from 100% to 12%. I could hear the notebook running stumbler (about 20 ft away) making happy found-signal noises. I checked stumbler and found my AP signal had jumped UP from -55 to -32 dB. The other nets now showed signal in the range of -60 to -80.

Changing nothing, after a couple minutes, my AP's indicated signal dropped from -32 back to -55 dB and the other net's signals were gone again.

I turned my AP off. The other nets jumped back up to their previous higher levels and two new ones showed up. My AP was greyed out as expected. Watching the signal on the other nets, they would randomly jump between two levels with periods of less than a minute to a few minutes. They would all go either up or down together.

So I think what I am seeing is that the card has some kind of digital AGC with big steps. Makes it hard to tell what level is really there.

Can anyone confirm my hunch? Is there any way to lock the gain on this SMC card or tell that the gain has stepped? I looked in the driver parameters and didn't see anything that sounded useful.

Reply to
xray
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where does it says that SMC is 200 mW card?

Reply to
John Smith

Lots of places. How about the SMC site for starters...

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Reply to
xray

i just ordered 300 mW card...

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Reply to
John Smith

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