Puzzled?

Basic physics!

The laptop almost certainly has one or two antennas mounted along the edges of the lid. That provides two physical characteristics of great significance. First, the lid is probably almost straight up and down, providing vertical polarization (which probably matches the antenna orientation of your Access Point). Second, with even a 12" diagonal screen, the sides of the lid would be sufficient to have an antenna that even exhibits some gain. You might have a pair of "7 dBi gain" antennas in the lid of your laptop!

The PCMCIA card is *small*. So small that the antenna is almost certainly not only one which cannot provide "gain", but may operate at a "loss" compared to the reference (so it might be a

-2 dBi antenna). And worse yet, that antenna is almost certainly horizontally polarized, making it somewhat directional and also making it a poor match for the probably vertical polarization of your Access Point antenna.

Which is to say, there are *very* good reasons that manufacturers started building wireless into the laptop itself.

1. Your WRT54G router has better performance, range, and reliability when talking to another 802.11g radio. OFDM is much better for dealing with multipath and reflections than 802.11b used by your WPC11.
2. Linksys makes 4 different mutations of the WPC11 card. (1.0, 2.5,

3.0, 4.0). The very first one had a fairly awful radio and antenna section. If yours looks exactly like this: yourself fortunate that it even works.

1. Your WRT54G uses Broadcom chips. So does your laptop. They like each other. Various versions of the WPC11 use chips from several manufacturers, none of which are Broadcom. The original WPC11 in the photo is a Prism2 HFA3841 by Harris-Intersil which doesn't really like Broadcom access points. There was a driver fix for this about 4 years ago that may affect whatever WPC11 mutation you're using. Check for updated firmware and drivers.

Running win xp sp2, with linksys w54 router and wpc11 adapter, wireless.

I was having problems with my range, say less than 60' from router to bedroom with my connection. tried all of linksys suggestions, and still dropped the connection when I would try to stay connected in the other rooms.

But, I enabled my Broadcom 802.11/b/g adapter in my laptop, and Presto, I can keep the connection on.

Question is, why is the built in adapter stronger than the linksys wireless adapter?????

red

Well, I am just happy I am not "confined" to the living room anymore!

red

"Peter Pan" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net:

yup, my laptop's aerial is a big antenna that's laid around the outside of the lcd.

smowk

Thanks for the info Jeff! Nice pics of your "office" too, I might add, as I checked out the home page.

red

Better aerial?

I would hazard a guess, if you have all the software configured correctly, you are having a problem with the hardware of your linksys adapter. Send it in for a new one.....

Ummm... So much for that "hidden" directory. A quick look at the picture reminded me that it's time to clean up (again).

You might find this entertaining:

for the "loading" message to clear. Then move the mouse around the picture. That's what I feel like today.