Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
As I just mentioned in my immediately preceeding post, I'm a total
neophite when it come to wirless networking, so I need to ask a
rather basic question.
In preparation for installing my first ever wireless network, I read
up on the subject awhile first, and I found several people who had
commented (in various places) that they had bought "upgrade" antennas
for their wirless cards, and that this helped them, either to make
connections where they otherwise couldn't, or else with throughput/
performance of their wireless link.
Being totally new to this stuff, I have no idea if I would benefit
from a better antenna for my wireless card or not, so I gotta ask:
How can I tell?
Are there some tools available for FreeBSD that would tell me about
stuff like:
Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI)
Failed Frame Transmission Count, etc.
and/or performance of the wirless link generally?
Humm... OK. I just found this, but it seems to be a Windoze-only thing:
http://sysnet.ucsd.edu/pawn/wrapi/
:-)
_______________________________________________
ifconfig ral0 list sta shows rssi + noise floor if the driver provides
it. As to performance you need to distinguish between tx+rx operation.
The ral driver in REELNG_7 uses a tx rate control algorithm that is
mismatched for the device capabilities. As a result tx performance is
suboptimal. Using unidirectional UDP tests like netperf -t UDP_STREAM
in each direction is useful to characterize operation + performance.
If your problem is you are simply too far from your ap then boosting
gain with an outboard antenna can help but rx sensitivity is just as
important (in many cases more important) than tx power so whatever you
do must consider this.
In the end you're likely better off just springing for a better wireless
card.
Sam
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