I have seen this before also. Chris is right to mention that the desktop and your laptop are likely reacting differently due to rec. sens. and / or power , IE fade margin differences.
Not trying to shamelessly plug products here, but I find a wi-spy to be very helpful in this situation. Sometimes the noise source is simply not wifi related and the wi-spy will help you to identify the best frequency selection. Also, I HIGHLY recommend that you standardize on deployed wifi bridges / adapters and make sure you run the same equipment in your laptop. I've seen a lot of WISP techs who add higher end / power wifi adapters in their laptops and while it may be greatly beneficial from a daily use standpoint, as a tech it detracts from your ability to diagnose customer SINR issues. There are many non-wifi noise sources and the WiSpy is very much worth having. -Mark Williams On Wed, 2008-03-12 at 09:41 -0400, chris cooper wrote: > John- > > It sounds like you might have noise impacting the local AP on channels > 1-6. Is the power and receive sensitivity the same on your laptop vs. > the customer PC? That might be the reason you are seeing the difference > in performance between the two. Did you run netstumbler or otherwise > look at the spectrum? Any chances of a local interferer in the house or > garage? > > chris > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of J. Vogel > Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 9:28 AM > To: WISPA General List > Subject: [WISPA] Some days I don't seem to know anything. > > Is it possible for interference to prevent a signal from showing up in a > > site > survey in Windows Zero Configuration utility? I set up a relay AP at a > home yesterday, the AP being on the roof of the garage (couldn't get > a link to my tower from the house). The wireless card I put in the > customers > computer would not connect to (usually would not even see) the AP, > although > it would find APs in other homes 1/2 mile away at times. My laptop, > sitting > on the desk next to the computer, connected immediately, with great > signal > strength. BUT, if I changed the channel to either 9, 10, or 11, then the > desktop unit would connect, also with great signal strength. I changed > out > the radio on the garage, changed the PCI wireless card in the desktop, > antennas, > everything, but as long as the AP was on channel 8 or lower, the desktop > would usually not find it, and when it did, the RSSI was very low. My > laptop > however, did not have any problems connecting no matter what channel > the AP was on, with excellent RSSI reported on all channels. > > Is there an explanation for what I was seeing? > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: [email protected] Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
