subject: Wireless Odds and Ends [print this page] Wireless Odds and Ends Wireless Odds and Ends
The Oddities
The first thing I want to mention is that Wireless network devices (the 802.11 variety) are, in the most part, compatible with each other. However, there are some strange cases that I've seen that showed this is not always the case. Here's a typical example of such:
A new router was setup, replacing a burned out old one. Most of the machines in the household connected up just fine but one machine was acting strange. It'd start connecting, then couple of seconds later gets disconnected and repeating this cycle over and over. Tweaking the settings did not help, only using a different wireless adapter for the machine did.
Encryption is also can be a point of incompability. WEP was the first method that was employed to encrypt wireless networks and some old wireless devices can only understand unencrypted or WEP encrypted signals. With these you can't use WPA or WPA2 encryption. Similarly some devices can't handle the newer WPA2 encryption. I always try to use the WPA encryption because it's safer and only resort to WEP if it's not avoidable. WEP is still a lot safer than not having any encryption which is just plain silly.
Another, new feature in routers is the automatic channel selection. This means that the router tries to sense when a channel is getting too crowded and would switch to a less busy one. This sometimes causes dropped connections when the router switches channel because the older wireless receivers are not prepared to this and will just see the signal gone. The devices will reconnect eventually but it might take a minute or two, which could be annoying when you are in the middle of an online game or other online activities. If random disconnections from the wireless is happening despite good signal strength then most cases the setting of a fixed channel in the router solves the problem.
I said "in most cases" because the next oddity with wireless networks could be the reason for the loss of wireless connectivity. It's the interference from other devices. The 2.4Ghz cordless phones are the most easily recognizable interferences but there are some other ones that could give one gray hair before they are found. For example, I worked on a case where the wireless connection would be getting dropped even if the router and the computer was 1 foot apart. However, in the morning and during the day there was no problem, only in the evening. Lacking the expensive equipment needed to trace down the source of the interference I'm suspecting the street light close the house which turns on when it gets dark.
Thank god, these instances are rare and most people are not having such trouble.
The next phenomenon is even more strange. I've seen some machines that go instantly into a system crash with the infamous Blue Screen of Death when in the vicinity of a particular wireless network. It doesn't need to be connected just whenever a particular wireless network is picked up by the wireless adapter in the computer, it crashes. I was not able to find the exact reason for this oddity yet but I know that it can be easily corrected by using a different wireless adapter. One particular case suggests that it might not be a hardware related thing but a software corruption of some kind. But it'd require a lot of digging and tracing of code to find why exactly this happens. If someone has a clue on this I'd very much interested in it. Just leave a comment.
Reaching Further With Wireless
My experience showed that the ads on the boxes of some routers about their coverage is mainly PR without much substance. In practice, there is little difference between the routers as far as coverage goes. Certain Router Adapter (receiver) combinations can give a better coverage but they are usually quite expensive. The reason why the coverage is not really dependent on what router you use is because the signal strength of the router is limited by regulations, so unless you hack your router it won't transmit beyond a certain point.
A solution to this is a range extender (or repeater). Years ago I had pretty bad luck with these but recently I gave another shot and checked out whether the current products are better. Well, they are. I just solved a wireless dead spot problem by using a wireless repeater from Netgear. It was pretty easy to set up and did exactly what it was supposed to do. They are not exactly cheap, with the price tag of $70+ but they also provide a wireless bridge to devices that are network capable but not wireless (such as internet TVs, network printers, etc).
Directional antennas were also a solution to this problem but router manufacturers switched to built-in antennas, or ones that are permanently attached and these changes made it impossible to hook up a directional antenna to the router. Most wireless adapters don't have an antenna plug either. Bummer.
Summary
I know this is a little bit harder reading but I hope that it will provide some useful information to people searching for answers on their wireless issues.
