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Wireless signal issues

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by jmiddleton

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Hello everyone. I wanted to find out if you had any suggestions in a problem I am having. I work for a mid-sized company (500-3999 employees) and we use a wired and wireless network. Our wired network is running very well with multiple T1s and many switches and routers and VPNs across locations and the such.

My issue, today, revolves around our wireless APs. We have APs ranging from Lucent to Cisco APs all over one of our locations. They all run the same SSID and for the most part, all of our other locations (setup the same way) are running just fine. A few of our APs have signal issues though. They will drop the signal sometimes and then regain signal again in a couple minutes. Other times the signal strength will be great all day. We are looking at upgrading everything to Cisco APs so hopefully it will fix most of our problems. I wanted to find out if you could give me any suggestions on Settings that can be changed to improve signal strength and quality or the best types of external antennas to get, etc. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Jesse Middleton

4 replies

by mikeewalton

The access points that are losing there connection wouldn't by chance be D-Links would they? Our company had the same problem with some laptops we were using inside our facility. This may go for other manufacturers also. It turns out that the original drivers, and connection application could not run w/o administrator privledges, they would connect for a while, and then drop. So for a while, I had about four users running around with administrator privledges. Fourtanately, D-Link finally released a new version fixing this. You might check this out.

by jmiddleton

These are Cisco APs that we have that are cutting out signals. The cards are generally Linksys and Belkin wireless cards.

by wlbowers

Have a compahy come in and do a frequency sweep of the area.

A lot of things will mess with wireless. You don't say what kind of company, but manufacturing equipment, electrical, someone put a cell tower or microwave tower up two doors down.

You can chase the ghost or you can get the straight scoop.

They will bring in a spectrum analyser and map the frequency spectrum of the area.

There is a company that sells a unit that is a backpack to an iPaq. Haven't tried one yet. I like the old HP.

Good Luck

Lee

by hozcanhan

Now, more than 3 APs all with same SSID ? possibly same channel ...Why ? That's all wrong ..Because of channel overlapping not more than 3 APs are recommended at the same site . Use ch 1 , ch 6 for the other and ch 11 for the other. ( 2.4 Ghz ISM band 2417 ,.....etc) .Use different SSIDs and divide users to authanticate to the nearest AP only. Do not broadcast the SSID . Do a mac address allow table for preventing cross logging retries. To increase the range and throughput use home made reflectors placed on the AP antenna horns ( 3dBi) , you will get %20 better performance . Use cisco pc cards ( the best performance) , if you are using pci change to usb client adapters and put up the usb cable to raise the "dongle ethernet adaptor" above the table level. Use a 1m pigtail to raise the pci cards horn antenna ... Good luck ! can help more if you elaborate on your equipment . pm if you wish .

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