Wireless connection troubleshooting
By
Gaia,
Posted on: 2011-05-23 11:05 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
It sounds like an interference issue, possibly with one of the other networks you can see. It's very likely that the signal of one of those is over-riding the signal from your landlord's router. One of those neighbors may have changed the channel that their wireless router was on to resolve problems they were having.
Their are myriad things that can affect the wireless signal one computer is receiving and not affect other computers.
Then again, it could just be the Belkin adapter. I love Belkin cables, but their network devices are ... ugh ... too problematic. I've seen more unresolvable problems with Belkin network devices than any other three brands combined.
Of course, I pretty much stick to Linksys/Cisco and occasionally D-Link. I've had the fewest unresolvable problems with these brands.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
How much "stuff" is between your PC and the landlord's WiFi router or access point? Are you next-door neighbors, or are there other people living between your place and the landlord's? (They don't even necessarily need to be in-line, merely nearby.)
Most WiFi uses the 2.4GHz band, which is subject to interference by cellphones and microwave ovens, among other things. The intermittent operation of these devices nearby can cause maddening drop-outs in wireless networks. A microwave might cause a drop-out only a few seconds long, while a phone conversation could drag on for hours. 
Also, there are only so many WiFi channels to go around, and many wireless routers/APs are often left on their factory-default channel by their owners, so the channel could be getting crowded with users.
Factor in an unreliable adapter, as Texas Justice attests to, and you have a very tenuous connection at best.
I would find out which channel the landlord is using, and scan for other access points in the neighborhood (your WiFi software should be able to tell you how many APs are around and what channels are in use). Then see if you can't talk the landlord into switching to a channel as far from the most-used channels as possible. (There are 11 channels, 1-11, with some overlap in frequencies between adjacent channels.) In other words, if most APs in the area are using channel 6 (as is often the case), try getting the landlord to change to channel 1 or 11.
Many WiFi routers/APs also have a feature where they can automatically select a channel to operate on, based on current local channel usage. If the router/AP is set to this mode, any wireless clients should follow along if the channel changes, since they are associated to the router based on its SSID (wireless network name) and security settings. You can see if the landlord would be willing to switch to this mode, if he hasn't already.
Good luck.
TargetOne
"If you two don't work this out RIGHT NOW, I'm turning this invasion around and going home!" - Emperor Cole
In regards to distances and obstacles, I live in a large house that's been carved up into 4 apartments. With the way the ground slopes, at the rear of the house the basement is effectively at ground level, and I live in the apartment that takes up the rear half of the 'basement'. The first floor is divided into two other apartments, and my landlord lives on the second floor. So the router is in the same house, but it is a couple floors up and more towards the front. I suppose the distance issue could explain why his computers are working and mine isn't, if there's interference from the neighbors.
I will try scanning to see what channels the networks are using. If it turns out that there isn't any overlap with the other networks, is there anything else to try besides getting a different brand of adapter?
@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.
This is what it means to be a tank!
well, no dice on the channel thing. The two usually visible networks are on channels 6 and 11, and they were actually joined by a new one today (looks like someone else nearby just got wireless hooked up) also on 6. However, the network I'm trying to connect to is on channel 1, so it's already as far as possible from the potentially interfering networks.
Looking around online, I've seen a fair number of reviews decrying this particular router as unreliable and having a weak signal. A few people even talked about having similar connection dropouts as me. However, in all the cases I saw it affected all networked computers at the same time. Do you think it could actually be the router after all?
(sent during a brief window of stability)
@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.
This is what it means to be a tank!
Given that the router is on the second floor and you are in the basement I doubt you are going to get much luck. Most routers will give a decent signal out to about 100 foot but that is without any obstructions such as walls, floors, electrical wiring, furniture etc. In addition to that the signal pattern of the router will probably resemble a donut - so decent signal around the router but very poor either directly above or (your problem) below.
You can get external antennae for some wireless adapters which could help - also try moving your PC (or its antenna if that is external) to different locations to see if you can get a better signal. If you can find a location with a reasonable signal you may find its not where you want to keep your PC - one option then would be to get a wireless repeater - most routers can be configured to operate as one if you can't find any- and locate that where you have a decent signal - then you just need to connect to your repeater.
Mind of Gaia lvl 50 Defiant's first Mind/Storm 'troller.
Deadly Doc 50 Dark/Dark Corr
and lots more on Pinnacle,Union and Defiant
Step 1: Drop the adaptor. Like Texas said Belkin is crap (though he said it more nicely). Also usb adaptors are just plain an inferior option and meant mainly for laptops. For a desktop get an internal wireless card.
Step 2: External booster antenna for the wireless card. If you are already getting 3 bars much of the time then pretty much any external booster antenna will be plenty. It will work even better if you get an antenna for the router as well.
Step 3: Reduce interference. A lot of the time people will have their cable modem and router setting right next to each other or even on top of each other. Bad idea, it causes interference and reduces signal strength. Not by much but then again when you only have 3 bars it doesn't take much. They should be separated by at least a couple feet if possible.
Step 4: Try rotating your antenna to face in different directions. Although the antennas of routers and the adapter are both supposed to be omnidirectional the truth is that their orientation can greatly affect signal strength. I used to run on a router with external antenna and had another such antenna on my computer. Rotating either antenna just 45 degrees could boost signal strength by a couple bars easily. And this was 100 feet away through 3 walls and a floor. Also don't assume that pointing the antennas directly at each other is the way to go. In some cases having them at 90 degrees to each other (horizontal and vertical) can actually result in greater signal strength.
Don't count your weasels before they pop dink!
Hey all, I'm hoping to get some help figuring out why my computer is refusing to maintain a stable wireless connection. Back in january I got my desktop hooked up via a usb wireless adapter to my landlord's wireless internet, and once I sorted out the initial glitches it was working pretty well.
However, it did have occasional periods where the connection would die for no apparent reason. The general pattern would be that it would suddenly drop the connection and the network would no longer appear on the list of visible networks. The adapter itself would still be working, since I could still see the two other nearby networks that are usually visible (neighbors, I assume), but I couldn't see the network I had been connected to. It's not a signal strength issue, because when it's visible it's usually a pretty healthy 3 bars. Occasionally, the network would reappear and my computer would try to reconnect, but it would usually fail and the network would then vanish again. Either that, or it would say that it had reconnected but I wouldn't be able to actually access anything, and then it would disconnect and vanish again in a few minutes. This could persist anywhere from less than an hour to an entire evening, but it was only a occasional occurrence.
A couple weeks ago something changed, and it suddenly started doing the above continuously. In all that period, I never had a stable connection for more than an hour or so, and that only a few times. Additionally, even when it was connected it was *extremely* slow and laggy - web pages took forever to load, and the one time I managed to get into CoH the rubberbanding was atrocious and netgraph was reporting 1000+ ping and large spikes of packet loss.
Initially I was assuming it might be a problem with the wireless router, simply because the behavior seemed to be so random. There seemed to be no link at all between anything I was doing and when the connection decided to drop out, reconnect, fail to reconnect, etc. Talking to my landlord, though, apparently there are 3 other computers and a wireless printer that have all had no problems, so it's something that my computer is doing.
I really don't know where to look for something like this. I consider myself a modestly computer literate person, but not enough so to fix them when they break. I did some googling and tried the steps listed here, and it *seems* to have helped slightly - I now have a stable connection perhaps 20% of the time rather than 2%, but it's still incredibly unreliable and is also still very slow and laggy. I don't really know what else to do.
Specific info: my system specs are as detailed here. I'm on windows 7; the other three functioning computers are all on vista. The wireless router is a Linksys E1000, and the wireless adapter is a Belkin N150 usb adapter. Does anyone have any ideas, either on what might be causing the problem or suggestions on where to look?
@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.
This is what it means to be a tank!