Depending on his AP and/or card, this could be bad advice.
If his AP and/or card have a poor adjacent channel rejection, then operation on an adjacent channel to neighboring APs will mean that you both interfere with them, and they with you.
Its better sometimes to operate on the *same* channel, and share the bandwidth, than have their randomly-timed packets blowing your receives away.
If you're going to attempt to run on a channel that your neighbor(s) doesn't (don't) use, then use net/macstumbler to locate the APs in-range and then move as far away (in frequency) from the strongest sources.
i.e. if all of your neighbors are running on ch1, then move to ch11.
Putting a larger omni antenna on your AP is sure to make the problem worse. Your neighbor's signals will be "louder" to the AP as well.
Its likely if you have your laptops configured to associate to "any" ESSID, then they are, in-fact picking the lowest channel were an AP of "sufficient" stregth is found. I know for a fact that the firmware in the Agere 11b chipset starts at ch1 during its scan. Other chipsets may be different.
Ajai, does the situation improve if you get close to (in the same room as) your AP?
Jim
Anthony Townsend wrote:
for starters, change channels. run net/macstumbler and pick the least used of 1,6 or 11
also you should be able to designate preferred networks in XP or use Location profiles in OSX
On Oct 19, 2004, at 10:10 PM, Ajai Khattri wrote:
When I first got my wireless AP it was great - I could pretty much sit anywhere in the apartment and get a reliable connection.
But as my neighbors started getting wireless access points Ive found the connection has gotten worse. Now I am limited to where I can use the wifi connection. If I do a scan in the front of the apartment I see 5 maybe 6 access points nearby. Im convinced those APs interfere with mine.
Because Im using wifi on laptops (that may travel from time to time) I
have them configured to connect to the nearest AP but sometimes this isn't
mine (in fact, one weekend I worked for 3 hours straight before noticing I
was using someone else's access point!).
I was just wondering what sort of techniques people recommend for
combatting this? Im thinking I may have to buy some antennas (Buffalo?) or
maybe invest in powerline ethernet devices and move my AP closer to the
center of the apartment (right now its close to my router which is at the
back of the aprtment). I have tried configuring different channels on the
AP and did not see any difference in signal/noise ratios. Any ideas?
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