Reliable Wireless Network: an oxymoron?

[TheFamilyMan]

I've already ditched my wireless netgear 11g router for a linksys wrt54gl; this was a major improvement (I'm still eyeing DD-WRT). Now my pci wireless 11g adapters, a netgear and an airlink101, seem to be the weak link for they always eventually drop the network link. The netgear's reception is terrible (even when it's in the same room as the router), and the airlink can't connect about 50% of the time but once it does, it's somewhat (but far from perfect) better than the netgear.

Is there really such a thing as a reliable wireless network? If so, what make/model router and PCI adapter are the secret? Do other wireless devices, such as telephones, interfere with wireless networks? Thanks for reading.

[mats.hogberg]

My D-Link is as reliable as can be possibly expected - OK, not 100% failsafe, but at worst a reset once every second/3rd month is all the problems it's given me.

/Mats

[oldandinthe way]

My Zytel router $9.99 after MIR stays connected. 40-60% signal strength in the house with the router in room below the garage. Intel wireless chip set in my Lenovo notebook. The trick - a $4.00 Compusa reflector on the antenna.

[TooLFooL]

i wrt54g and get good to excellent signal anywhere in the house. other ireless devices can interfere, also microwave ovens, anything that makes "electrical noise". the higher up you can get your router and antennas, the better.

[glockjs]

buy all linksys products across the board to reduce headaches. other companys make good products here and there but in my experience using all linksys cuts down on headaches.

[bevills1]

IMO the router is the most important link for wireless. I tried D-Link and Hawking routers that were such poor range that they were returned for refund. My first router was AT&T 6850G, and second was US Robotics USR5461 obtained just as backup for the AT&T; each was $20 after rebate, and both work well within 4,000 square feet through up to 3 walls as well as both upstairs and downstairs. I've seen some poor reviews on some Linksys, D-Link and others. About the best that can be done is to only select routers that have very good user ratings, and I select only those that have 4 out of 5 star rating or better.

[Soopafresh]

buy all linksys products across the board to reduce headaches. other companys make good products here and there but in my experience using all linksys cuts down on headaches.

Often, but not always the case. Had a USB-Wireless adapter that caused so much grief I bit the bullet and bought the client a D-link PCI card just to shut them up.

[glockjs]

buy all linksys products across the board to reduce headaches. other companys make good products here and there but in my experience using all linksys cuts down on headaches.

Often, but not always the case. Had a USB-Wireless adapter that caused so much grief I bit the bullet and bought the client a D-link PCI card just to shut them up.

more often than not. yeah i know once in awhile :/ the last d link card i had used to freeze up my system x.O

[Conquest10]

I guess it also depends on the OS. I have a WRT54G and it doesn't usually give me problems. The only time I get a loss of connection is when transferring huge files from one computer to another (around 700MB or higher). However, I do not lose the connection on my Mac that uses the same type of wireless device as one of my PCs.

[BJ_M]

ive had the best luck with also a WRT54G - though not perfect .....


im trying out now a belkin pre-n router (series v2) and it is a piece of crap .... good range to be sure ... but requires a reboot almost every other day ... cant handle more than 4 connections it seems and a bunch of other connect issues .... ive also used a smc high power with an external ant. GREAT connection - never a reboot - but speed is crap - major crawl ...

[Nelson37]

I find no real functional difference between D-link and Linksys, with dozens of field installs of each. Same thing with Ford and Chevy, you can easily find someone with a bad experience with anything. Accurate evaluations must take into account large numbers of reports. Many people will downgrade a product simply because they do not like the color of the box, or because they cannot understand the setup software.

As with all PC products, everybody occassionally makes a bad model and there is the rare defective product right out of the box.

Your lack of connection with both products in the same room and the 50% connection rate indicates some sort of severe issue. Isolate to a single router and single wireless card, all others off. Identify and disable every possible electrical device in the building, checking connection ability and speed, more than once, with each device elimination.

Wireless phones, radios, microwave ovens, any electrical device with poor or defective shielding can cause this. A chattering card can cause this. The particular site you connect to most often could be having high traffic at this time of year.

What do your signal strength meters show? How many routers do the cards see? Do you have WPA or WEP enabled, and have you tried turning them off? Do you have any of the super-G or hi-speed modes enabled on the router, and have you tried turning them off? Have you updated the firmaware in the router and the cards? Do NOT do this in wireless mode!!!

[ahhaa]

with the router in room below the garage.

just curious... how do you get a room below your garage? Is it a California thing?

[scottb721]

My Dlink USB key gives me constant headaches even though it's direct line of sight and "very good" signal level.

Often I'll come home and find the wireless disconnected or the icon in Connection Manager gone completely.Reseating the USB key restores it. Still a pain though.

May try turning off the Turbo function the 624 router has.

[gadgetguy]

My Dlink USB key gives me constant headaches even though it's direct line of sight and "very good" signal level.

Often I'll come home and find the wireless disconnected or the icon in Connection Manager gone completely.Reseating the USB key restores it. Still a pain though.

May try turning off the Turbo function the 624 router has.

We had the same problem with my Father-In-Law's wireless. I downloaded updated drivers for the USB key and we haven't had a problem since.

[InXess]

Chances are the drivers, as pointed out, could be the weakest link, not the routers. I've had SMC, Linksys and ended up with Netgear all throughout. Never a reboot plus signal is 8-9/10 (full speed) at the top floor whole feeding from the basement (single antenna unit). Strange but seems that everyone could swear by the brand others have discarded... So far never had a stomach to check the D-link as it seems to be such a mixed bag.

[Capmaster]

Two things that are important with wireless:

1. Make sure it's not allowing Windows to shut it down to save power
2. Make sure you have the transmit power set to 100%.

Both of these settings can be accessed with Device Manager.

[TheFamilyMan]

Thanks for all the replies. Here's what I've done/discovered so far:

1. The windows XP wireless assistant is vastly superior to the vendors' supplied monitor/assistant software. Using the XP monitor, the links have completely stablized.
2. My netgear PCI adapter has problems with signal strength, it fluctuates from max to nearly nothing constantly, while the other adapters I've tried at the same physical location are rock solid at max strength. This is a bummer, because otherwise it's the best for online gaming: it never glitches, except when the signal gets too weak and it punts the link. I'm looking into RMAing it; netgear has a 3 year warantee. I've tried new drivers to no avail.
3. My $10 airlink101 PCI adapter is as good as a $50 linksys that I just bought (which I'm taking back to Fry's). Both are rock solid in term of signal lock, but both suffer from glitches when gaming online (my son is the one who's crying about this). I've tried the latest drivers for both. I'd swear they are the same product, and the linksys software really sucks compared to the airlink101 software. IMO linksys adapters are grossly overpriced for what you get; it really pisses me off

[BJ_M]

well i am going to throw this belkin pre-n wireless router out the window any moment -- how can they sell this crap ? and NO support or updated firmware for it ...... i will give to anyone for free - it will be at the curb .....

[Scorpion King]

Recently I was in the market for a new PCI wireless adapter and was going to buy Linksys. I payed about the same $$ and got another WRT54G router instead. I upgraded the firmware to DD-WRT sp2, put it in client mode, and now have a strong solid connection to my other router which is hooked to the DSL. I like this setup better than any I've had so far.

Oh yea... I bricked one router while upgrading the firmware.

Good luck.

[ratskie]

I'll give a vote for Buffalo. I think there're better and more stable than most home-style routers. I have a few at work, and they perform very well in a high electrical-noise plant. Just my $0.02 worth.

[Capmaster]

Stay away from Actiontek hardware. I have a Qwest combo modem/g router that came with DSL service. It's a complete POS

I disabled the router side and use the modem with my D-link g router. It works fine that way, but the router side is crap.

[SingSing]

My Zytel router $9.99 after MIR stays connected. 40-60% signal strength in the house with the router in room below the garage. Intel wireless chip set in my Lenovo notebook. The trick - a $4.00 Compusa reflector on the antenna.

I can't find the $4.00 Compusa reflector you mentioned. Is it still available ? and how does it work ?

[LSchafroth]

I had a Netgear FVS318 router with a Netgear AP. The wireless network had to be reset about 2 times a week to keep it going.

I had a Dlink and a Linksys that worked fairly well but I try to stick with Netgear on everything. I since upgraded from Cable to DSL and replaced my router with a Netgear that has DSL modem and AP built in and my wireless network is rock solid now.

Love it. What a difference between models.

LS

[CBC]

Have had terrible performance using Dlink stuff, & my experience with their "tech support" was equally dismal. Went to Fry's & bought a cheap Airlink 101 Turbo-G router & pci card for like $30 total & they work a treat. Can hit 860Kb/s thru it when downloading large files, & even my standard g laptop wireless can hit those high numbers using it. I have to reboot the router once in a great while (usually during BT sessions that drag on overnight), but over all am very happy with it.

[Danno100]

I use a D-Link 624 router and a D-Link repeater. Signal strength in my home (4,400 sqft) is very good to excellent in all rooms. I have 5 wireless PC's, and 3 Media Centers (DSM-320). I use Linksys and D-link PCI cards.

I suggest turning off your router DHCP and assign an IP address to each wireless device to improve reliability of your connection (I have had IP address conflicts when using DHCP).

[RichardZwicky]

A good antenna on router is much more important, try to use an external antenna.

[CBC]

yes, I have added two to my network & saw instant improvement

[ViRaL1]

My experience has been that you're generally better off when you're using products from the same manufacturer and the same model line. I use a Netgear Super-G router and for a while I was using their Super-G cardbus adapter in my laptop and had no problems. Eventually I ended up buying a Gigabyte Mini-PCI wireless adapter for my laptop since I had the slot and their card uses the same Super-G chipset that Netgear uses. I get excellent reception at home and at work (which is running a WRT54G), as well as at my neighbor's (connecting to my router). Before this I used all Linksys (WRT54G and WPC54G) at home with similar experiences and I was able to stream mounted ISOs through WMP with no issues, but I wanted better throughput, so I switched. Deals can be found on just about any consumer brand, so if you're patient you can get products all from the same manufacturer. I won't say this is 100% true for all brands, but for the most part, Linksys works better with Linksys, Netgear works better with Netgear, etc.

[TheFamilyMan]

It seems disabling the SSID broadcast messes up the airlink101 adapter's ability to find the network. So I enabled SSID broadcast: the airlink101 works PERFECTLY now with the linksys WRT54gl, but only if I use the airlink101 monitor software; it glitches if I use the winXP monitor. It's interesting that the linksys adapter I had briefy seemed to have the same SSID broadcast problem. Regardless of all attempts and tricks, I could never get the netgear PCI adapter to be reliable. About every 30 minutes it drops the link even when it's in the same room as the router though I solved its signal strength problem. Fry's has the airlink101 adapter on sale today for $11...hmmmm.

Of course with the enabled SSID broadcast, I use WPA2 TKIP, mac address filtering, and only a wired connection can get into the guts of the router. I'll have to live with the risk

[dun4cheap]

I use the WRT Firmware with my Linksys 54wrtgs. Fortunately I have Version 2 with all the extra memory. I have not had to reset my router since moving to this firmware. It has a lot of cool features to boot.