[geeks] Wireless Problems Redux

[Michael Kaegler]

There is such a thing as *too much* power.

Kind of like the stereo in your car (similar effect, different 
reason). Blasting it gives you lots of noise and lots of distortion. 
With so much distortion, the laptop isn't going to be able to always 
make sense of the signal, and the AP may not realize it just ran over 
one of the laptop's frames since its blasting so loud. And the 
strength of signal reflections bouncing off doors, walls, fine china 
and roaches is stronger, complicating matters even worse...

This is the analysis from the MIT Roofnet people anyhow, and I tend 
to agree. Everyone who builds a Roofnet node automatically goes for 
the 200mW cards. From what I hear, some of the admin types are trying 
to convince a few of the nodes to drop to 80mW and they're seeing 
throughput go *up* over those links.

(Sorry, no links to published information on this...totally gleaned 
from conversations)
-mKaegler


>On Jul 29, 2004, at 10:26, sammy ominsky wrote:
>
>>Actually, it was weird. I tried 52mW, and my Airport card started 
>>dropping the network connection repeatedly. It now does it 
>>periodically, even though I've backed off on the AP transmit power. 
>>I suspect something's wrong and I need to go in to the Apple store. 
>>:(
>
>Oh, something I forgot to mention. Running Kismac on my powerbook, 
>when the network drops, still shows a strong steady signal from the 
>AP. I can't be 100% sure it's the card and not the AP, though. But 
>my kids' eMac isn't dropping, so it's a safe assumption.
>
>---sambo