Hi, all...
This is sorta an O'dark thirty post... late at night, mind wandering...
Anyway, I've got an AirLink wireless card in a mini-tower (XP SP2), with an extension cable that puts the antenna at the same height as the Linksys router's antenna, sitting about 8 feet apart. Both antennas are set at 45 degrees in the same direction. The NIC reports execellent connection at
54Mbs always. And the connection frequently drops. This drives my wife nuts, because she'll compose a multi paragraph email only to have it bomb when she tries to send. It drives my daughter crazy because she's trying to do college work on-line.Don't have 802.xx authentication enabled.... don't have any power saving options enabled... just turned off Windows firewall and that had no impact (not that I expected it would, but, what the hell...)
When I view available wireless networks, I see many, up to 6 or 7 at any given time. All have 1 bar with the exception of one that has 3 bars. I've seen reference to changing channels, but the NIC in question has no channel settings. The router is using channel 11 at present. I've got two PC's that access the router via wi-fi and I've noticed that if I change the channel on the router but not on the NIC's of the workstations, it doesn't seem to have any effect. Meaning the router can be set at channel 6 and the NIC (of the PC capable of selecting a channel) can be set at channel 11 and communication still happens. Like I said.... an O'Dark Thirty post.
I'd be willing to drop the extra bucks on buying a Linksys NIC if I thought that might offer better compatibility betwix the two entities, but history has taught me that pairing hardware from the same vendor is not always a guaranteed solution. I will note that the second PC also drops the wireless connection but not nearly as frequently as the one in question.
Opinions, suggestions, and even kiss-offs, highly anticipated.
Thanks,
Lang