CCK and OFDM power output, what does netstumbler see?

[Richard Bradfield]

I have a factory site that has been going a number of years with 11.b radios only Cisco 1220, recently expanded and added some 1230s that have 11.b/g, now when walking round to do a repower I see my netstumbler records the same power level for both a 54Mb on channel 6 as an 11b AP on the same channel, with the relative position of the APs and Antenna, the 11Mb should have been a lot stronger.

then it made me think does OFDM at 30mW radiate the same power as CCK at 100mw?

does the different form of transmission make a difference to the apparant power o/p as measured by something like Netstumbler?

[srosenthal]

30mW is just the same at either CCK or OFDM, still 30mW. The mode used for transmission will not amplify the power recieved. What could effect what you are seeing is the gain of the antenna being used. I am also not sure that Netstumbler is your best tool to judge recieved signal strength.

Seth Rosenthal, CWNE #55

[bauti1428]

If you have a cisco aironet abg, use the aironet site survey utility and it gives you better reading on the signal strength.

[bcolvin]

Remember most of the 802.11 passive software such as Netstumbler base the signal level on the Beacon transmitted by the AP, which is still normally 802.11b at 1mbs. This is the default for bg AP's for backward compatibility.