It's odd that all 22 channels would be saturated. As Chris said maybe you have a bad piece of hardware. Even with overlap you can usually have at least a few wireless networks sharing the same channel.
Another possibility is you have some kind of interference in your neighborhood but I can't imagine what would interfere on both 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz. Wireless routers/NICs have no real problem with discriminating between their traffic and your neighbors. The real issue is when you both talk at the same time. What is supposed to happen is your NIC listens then if it's clear it talks. If there is a collision both parties back off anad wait a random period to talk again. If there are continual collisions the backoffs get longer. So if you have something filling the air with noise you could get the kind of behavior you are describing. As has been mentioned you may want to scan to see what is out there. In Windows Netstumbler works for a,b,and g but I'm not sure about n. Under Linux/*BSD Kismet works very well for a,b,g and n. Either of these assume that you have a compatible wireless card. Netstumbler is an active scanner so it is detectable. Kismet is passive so you have to wait for someone to broadcast but beacon packets will get you a pretty good idea rather quickly and it is not detectable since it does not send traffic. If you see tons of traffic on all channels with either of these tools then you probably have a busy neighborhood. If you see completely open channels but you still have trouble getting connected you either have a hardware issue or something other than wireless networks creating interference. On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 7:24 AM, Andrew Farnsworth <farn...@gmail.com>wrote: > On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 8:12 AM, Daniel Owen <danielowe...@gmail.com>wrote: > >> As another person suggested 5 Ghz is much less crowded. You said you had >> tried an N router. Are you certain that the N router was using 5 Ghz >> exclusively? There are a fair number of N routers that use both 2.4 Ghz and >> 5 Ghz for N. There are even a few that are 2.4 Ghz exclusively. The tipoff >> (outside of reading the specs) on the exclusively 2.4 Ghz models is that >> they don't have 802.11a backward compatibility since they have no 5 Ghz >> radio. I would make sure that the N router you are using is only using 5 >> Ghz. Also have you tries both 20-MHz and 40-MHz? All 40-MHz really is is two >> adjacent channels bonded together.In theory the router is supposed to shift >> traffic to the less interfered band if one band is getting heavy >> interference. >> >> The reason that 5 Ghz is superior to 2.4 Ghz outside of the limited use is >> that there are more channels available. With 2.4 Ghz (802.11 b and g) you >> have 11 channels but only 3 are non-overlapping. Throw on top of that that >> at least one or two of your neighbors have probably decided to use one of >> the in between channels because it is "clear" and you have a few neighbors >> who are interfering with two of the non-overlapping channels. Each channel >> overlaps 2 channels above and 2 channels below so for example channel 1 uses >> channel 1-3, Channel 4 overlaps with 2-6, channel 6 overlaps 4-8 etc. As you >> can see a user using channel 4 overlaps with channel 1 and channel 6 making >> them a very annoying neighbor. Channels 1,6 and 11 are the only >> non-overlapping channels. With 5 Ghz wireless (a and sometimes n) you have >> 22 non-overlapping channels to choose from. If you are using 40-MHz all 5 >> Ghz you will use 2 adjacent channels but you are still talking about a much >> larger number of available channels. Unless you are in an extremely densely >> populated area you should be able to find some available 5 Ghz space that is >> either open or has limited interference. >> >> Another option you might look at is setting our network card to 802.11b >> only. 802.11b can deal with a lot more noise than 802.11g. >> >> Good luck > > > Daniel, > Thanks for the suggestions. Yes, I am sure that the router has 5Ghz and > it was using 5 Ghz. Several reasons I know this is that the interface shows > it and I have tried several laptops with the ability to restrict to which > band to connect to. No significant difference. I have tried 20 and 40 Mhz > settings and, if anything, 20 Mhz is more stable. I do still need to run a > net stumbler (or equivalent) scan of the neighborhood, but I have been too > busy recently to do so. Maybe this weekend will see some free time come my > way. > > Thanks again and MAIH... > > > Andy > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to nlug-talk@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to nlug-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
