Wireless Card Settings

I have a Linksys Wireless G notebook adapter (WPC54G). I was wondering what putting the card in different modes such as 802.11b or 54G highest performance. What is the fragmentation threshold? If I were to raise or lower it what would it do? What does frame bursting do? What is Premable mode and what is Long TX Premamble mode? Would raising or lowering the transmit rate do anything worthwhile?

My problem is either interference or congestion because when everyone is gone or asleep the connection is fine, but during the day the connection is useless. I was wondering what the settings do so I can fool around with them. I also don't have access to the router. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

I've never fiddled around with the fragmentation threshold or TX preamble mode however you will experience the best performance with the card set on 54G highest performance for sure.

The only settings that I would tweak would be to make sure it's on 54G not B, make sure the transmit power is on high, also check out the roaming setting which can be adjusted for a slightly better connection as well when set to optimal performance as opposed to optimal roaming. Changing the wireless channel on the card can sometimes increase performance also if there is too much interference. Make sure the router isn't near any cordless telephones or other wireless equiptment as that will also interfere with the connection/s.

This is all assuming ofcourse that the wireless router is capable of transmitting in wireless G which it probably is.

 

Thanks, I'll fiddle around with that stuff. I don't see any setting for roaming mode. What would frame bursting do if I enabled it?

 

Basically frame bursting takes smaller packets and rebundles them into larger one to reduce overhead by filling in the mandatory gaps between packets, there by maybe giving you more thoughput.

 

"If you specify a low RTS threshold value, RTS packets will be sent more frequently. This will consume more bandwidth and reduce the throughput of the packet.
On the other hand, sending more RTS packets can help the network recover from interference or collisions which might occur on a busy network, or on a network experiencing electromagnetic interference. "

My network is both busy and has interference, so does anyone know what good values would be for RTS Threshold value and Fragmentation threshold on such a network?

 

In your advanced settings make sure you are set to AP only.

Then download a copy of netstumbler and run a survey of your site. You may find that some one has one of the 11n routers/ap that is not playing well with others. This 11n hardware should have never been released. The latest beta std, release 1.10 address this problem. If everything works correctly it should drop out of 11n mode with other networks present.

 

There are four routers and they are all exactly the same with neither being
11n. I'm not exactly sure what netstumbler is supposed to do for me, sure it shows noise versus signal strength, but I don't have any control over the noise level. I most I can do is fiddle around with the advanced settings in my wireless card. This brings me back to my last question, for a wireless network with a lot of noise and congestion what settings range should I screw around with for fragmentation and RTS threshold.

 

seems we went down this same road in your other thread. Here is a link to help others who might consider trying to help.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=105281

I would simply buy a different $30 wifi NIC and be done with the problem rather then spend 100hrs. spinng your wheels on the exact same issue.

Or did you decide to buy a new system as per your thread in the "what to buy" forum?

 

Yeah, you're right, I'm tired of spinning my wheels. I was set to buy a new system in the next couple of weeks, but I began thinking about what I might need in the future and decided against it. So my decision is postponed for a few months, or until this computer fails or whatever comes first.