WRE54G Range Expander -- Not Very Powerful

Here is the situation.

I have a house that is laid out from north to south at about 60 feet, with two walls between one bedroom on the opposite end from the access point, and the same with the other bedroom except it is not in direct line with the access point. Without an expander there is no signal to these two rooms, except in the doorways. Placing a wireless laptop in the doorways gives me

2 out of 5 bars according to one Vista laptop, and a weak signal on an XP SP2 desktop no higher than 11Mbps. But for practical reasons they cannot reside in the doorways.

The expander, if placed at an outlet in the hallway near the doorways, gives no boost at all. If mounted on either doorway, it boosts the signal significantly to the workstations no matter where they are in the room, but ONLY for the room in which the expander is placed. I've upgraded the wireless card on the XP PC to the "Speedbooster" version that touts 35% extra power, and it hasn't helped at all. So in this situation I would need TWO expanders unless someone can tell me what I am doing wrong.

I have the expander working steadily now. This was helped greatly by the fact that I trashed the install disk that came with it and did it manually. (In fact, all LinkSys wireless cards in the house operate more efficiently when installed manually, using the Windows interface.)

Any suggestions are welcome.

Thank you.

Reply to
The Walrus
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"The Walrus" hath wroth:

That's interesting as the install disk only sets the password, SSID, channel number, and encryption. No other parameters are set or reset.

Sure. Time to have some fun at your expense. Setup a little test network consisting of a fast PC or laptop running as an Iperf server. It gets plugged into a wireless router using a CAT5 cable.

On the "server", run: iperf -s No internet connection is required or desired. Do NOT power on the repeater at this point. Note that this should be done with everything in one room.

Connect to the wireless router with a wireless client, preferably a laptop. It runs Iperf in client mode as in: iperf -c ip_address_of_server You should get a TCP thruput equal to about half the wireless connection speed. If it's in the same room, a 54Mbit/sec wireless connection will yield about 25Mbits/sec thruput.

Now, setup the repeater for the same same SSID as the wireless router. Nothing else, just the SSID. Don't even bother to check if the laptop is going through the repeater to the wireless router. Just turn on the power. My guess is you'll get less than 20% of the thruput from the previous measurement. On some repeaters, it was less than 10%.

However, if you drag the wireless router and server to some location where the laptop CANNOT directly connect to the wireless router, with the repeater half way in between, then you'll get about 30-40% of the initial thruput. 50% is the theoretical maximum.

I'll explain what's happening if you want details.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Yes please. Sounds like this may be what I'm seeing which I described in my post below (Belkin Repeater)

Would still like a Windows tool that tells me which AP I'm connected to thought.

Thanks and Regards, B

Reply to
bob.binz.ut

snipped-for-privacy@googlemail.com hath wroth:

It's past midnight and I'm ready to simulate dropping dead. You get the short version without numbers. I don't wanna try thinking much.

What's happening is that only one transmitter can be on at a time. By necessity, all these transmitters are on the same channel. In the room, we have the wireless router, the repeater, and the client, all of which have transmitters on the same channel. The FCC does not allow sychronized transmission so the repeater has to operate with a collision avoidance mechanism (CSMA/CA) and a timed backoff in case of a collision. This works fairly, but is not perfect. The repeater is usually set to retransmit immediately upon receiving a valid packet because it has almost no buffering. So it spends most of its time rudely hogging the airtime and tailgating the access point and wireless client. The results is a substantial number of collisions and corresponding delays in transmissions. Collisions are particularly bad because they are a total waste of airtime. When you move the wireless router and client away from each other, it eliminates the main source of collisions, and throughput improves.

Most of the 3rd party connection managers offer connection by MAC address. See:

It's mostly free. However the connection manager section times out 15 days in the free version. $35 to register.

Also, WiFiFoFum, which I use on my XV6700 PDA, shows MAC's:

Note the multiple MAC's per SSID on the screenshot. Unfortunately, it's just a war driving sniffer and not a connection manager.

There are probably other wireless clients and connection managers that show multiple MAC addresses for a given SSID. I think (not sure) that the Netgear client manager that comes with my WG511 card, also shows individual MAC addresses. It certainly does show hidden SSID's. There are others but I'm too lazy to searching.

Of course, there's Netstumbler, which shows all the MAC addresses.

You might also succeed with ping and arp. Ping the IP address of the router and then run: arp -a The MAC address that is next to your routers IP address is the device MAC address. Of course, if you ping the IP address of the repeater, arp will show the MAC address of the repeater. If you're going through a repeater to the wireless router, I think (not sure) that it will show the MAC address of the repeater, not the router, with the IP address of the router. It's been so long since I've used a repeater, that I don't recall. Try it.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

How do you like the xv6700? I have been sitting on the fence about getting a PPC phone. I would be using it on VZW.

Reply to
George

George hath wroth:

I wish you hadn't asked. Ever see a device with so much potential, but which doesn't quite deliver the potential? The XV6700 is one of those. It can do literally everything I want, and does all of it badly. Every feature is 90% functional. Wireless works, but is

802.11b only. Wi-Fi is also a battery killer. The earphone volume sucks but works ok with a headset. BlueGoof setup and operation is clumsy and non-intuitive. Most of the Windoze based features have the traditional permanent Windoze bugs. Much of what I needed to fix involved registry tweaks. Verizon does not support the latest revision firmware and has no intention of even admitting that it has Wi-Fi built in. It will probably not support WM6. The most serious issue is that during a call, the screen will go into battery save mode, thus preventing me from checking my schedule or looking up a phone number while talking. Despite all these problems, I still like the idea of having everything in one PDA and use mine heavily.

I wrote a web page on setting it up, but left out most of my criticism:

I also suggest you dig through:

for additional data.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

On Mon, 02 Apr 2007 09:49:55 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

By comparison, I love my new Cingular-branded Motorola V3xx, which is blindingly fast on data, pretty darn stable, an excellent phone, and capable of doing everything I'd want from a PDA. I run the Gmail app for email, Google Maps for directions and local businesses, check my Calendar with the browser and SMS messaging, tether my laptop for true broadband HSDPA Internet access, etc. On a dirt cheap 1 GB microSD card I store lots of podcasts for listening at my convenience. Beautiful display. Rugged. Long battery life. Highly recommended.

Reply to
John Navas

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