I got my hands on someone's Verizon Myfi today and it was set to Auto choose what channel to broadcast its SSID on. The crazy thing chose channel 2! It was putting out a pretty strong signal too. I was seeing a -50 dB from 10 feet away.
To anyone else connected to channel 1 or 6 a signal on channel 2 is going to be noise, i.e. interference. When doing scans I have seen this before. I have seen these things on every channel but 1,6,11 now that I think about it. I logged into its web interface and was able to force it to use channel 1. There is also an easy to use interface right on the device where I could chose the channel. I'm just alarmed that these things choose non-standandard channels. If 3-4 or more of these things show up in room hosting a conference we may have a real problem. Its hard enough to put 120 laptops in a room and get them all on and happy let alone having these things out there. I'm curious, does anybody police these devices at high density events or make an announcement requesting folks turn them off? I can't imagine these Myfis perform well in high density situations due to their competing for bandwidth on both 2.4 and cellular bands. Thanks -- John Kaftan IT Infrastructure Manager Utica College ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
