Re: Own WiFi overpowered ... now what ?
 

one last 'out there sorta thing then off to sleep for me...

I just thought of one really weird problem read about a few years ago...someone had some flaky wifi issues in their office and it turned out to be a bad ballast in the fluorescent light near the router...they only figured it out because one day someone was in the office to do some work and suddenly there was a wifi connection. I can't personally vouch for that being accurate but stranger stuff happens anymore.

Re: Own WiFi overpowered ... now what ?
 

ok.
once again - I don't think a broken ballast has its own SSID :) but thanks.

I went and put NetStumbler on my laptop and ran it at and around our office (drove around in my car). The pcmcia card was a Batsonic CB80211G. I don't think it has as good a reception as my N800 since it only picked up the 3blindmice about 200 yrds north of our building.
I attached a screenshot.
So, I don't know how to interpret the findings. The help in NetStumpler does not have anything written in it. 3blindmice shows up as a Peer not an AP - so what does that mean?
Also in the tree view under SSID/3blindmice there are two pc's. But the other MAC address is shown in the right panel as having SSID YellowLady . Hm?
Well, we thought one really big business might have that strong WiFi. But it turned out they don't.
Also, I could not pick up our own signal standing just two feet away from the router. I switched it off and back on - no change. I do not have the password to login in the router for possible configs. Gotta call the network guy again.
I do get the feeling the router has a problem though. We should just try a brand new one with our old settings and see.

Thanks for all your help.
If I ever find out what the deal is I will post it here.

johenkel

Re: Own WiFi overpowered ... now what ?
 

Never used netstumbler, but I'm guessing 'peer' indicates that it's operating in ad-hoc mode.

That and the vendor being user-defined suggests that it's a renegade PC, though it could be an AP configured in ad-hoc, with spoofed MAC.

I'm not sure what you mean, "only picked up the 3blindmice about 200 yrds north of our building"? You're saying you could not pick it up from in the building, or could not pick it up farther than 200 yds?

If the latter, it's possibly within your building, though I realize you said that no other XP machines have WLANICs. If the former, definitely not. And your router is toast anyhow... so fix that and see if it works. I'm betting the 3blindmice signal's not really strong enough to be an issue.

Re: Own WiFi overpowered ... now what ?
 

yeah, I meant that I could not even pick up a single signal inside our building (incuding ours).
3blindmice only 200 yrds north and only there.

Have to say, I did not try with my N800 - couldn't pry it off my wifes hands this morning. It is almost her's now .... :( shouldn't have put all the games on it....

(Funny, I AM in Benson right now. A district in the city here.)

Re: Own WiFi overpowered ... now what ?
 

well, of course not silly!! ;) But like I said it was causing interference. I don't recall if it was electrical or a freak 2.4ghz interference...but I know it happened...once...and it is still FUNNY to me.

Yup, 'peer' means Ad-Hoc...same diff...

If you are not seeing any signal in your building with the router on and broadcasting...then yes the wifi side of the router is smoked. Even if there was an issue from the other router on channel 6, you would still see your router. Netstumbler is more like a sniffer in that it simply looks for signals w/o trying to connect. And even with interference you would still see your net.

I do still feel swapping out routers is the best sure fire way to begin. Routers are so cheaply made today they simply do not last on average. Like I mentioned I usually end up replacing one every 2-3 yrs. And I try and keep one backup just in case.

As for the N800's wifi sensitivity...I agree 10000% and feel it's a better device then the POS Intel 3945abg card in my laptop. The N800 finds nets my laptop never sees. Still cannot connect to them but at least it sees them. The Intel card and it's software have never been worth a darn in my experience. Everything from poor sensitivity to awful software with one of the worst memory leaks I have have run into...Intel of course denied it for months.

And I too would love to know what ends up as the issue...really an interesting mess for sure.

Re: Own WiFi overpowered ... now what ?
 

Am I the only one that cannot read half of this thread, now?

When an "over-sized" image is attached, the text flows out past the right
edge of the (center) frame, and there's no scrollbar to allow me to see it.


I'm running Firefox 2.0.0.12 on FC8 2.6.23.15 on this machine, but it also
happens on other browsers, as well.

Re: Own WiFi overpowered ... now what ?
 

Perhaps you're the only one using the default forum theme. ;)

Try Classic, it works better. Also slap some usercontent.css on it.

Re: Own WiFi overpowered ... now what ?
 

I'll have what YellowLady is using!