Channel Setting

[smicale]

I have upgraded my 1200 AP to a 802.11b/g radio and now I am experiencing a lot of drops by my clients. When I was running just my 802.11b radio I had some issues with my clients, but after setting my channel to a particular one instead of "LEAST CONJESTED" I saw my problems go away. Since upgrading to the new radio I am having the drops occur again, but since I had to reload my AP after the I put the new Radio in I don't know what channel I had the AP set to. One thing that I feel might be disconnecting my clients is that we have about 4 or 5 2.4GHz cordless phones in the vicinity of my wireless stuff and I think it might be interfering. What channel can I use to mybe clear this problem up? Or is there something else I can do to see why my clients are dropping?

Thanks

-Scott

[scottmac]

You should use channels 1, 6, or 11 ...

The easiest way to see "who's using what" would be to download and run NetStumbler (www.netstumbler.com - it's free).

NS is a Windows application that will show you channel activity and interference in your area.

Run NS and pick the least-congested / least interfered channle (1, 6, or 11)

Good Luck

Scott

[smicale]

Thanks for the info on NetStumbler. Can you tell me how I decifer the graph? Meaning the noise level on the channels.

Thanks

[smicale]

Well I have been playing with this NetStumbler program all day trying differnent channels with my AP and so far I have tried channels 1, 2, 3, and 4. All of those channels have caused problems for me, but I am not seeing another AP's around that are running on the same channel. I do have one that is on channel 6 and one on 1 that is far away from this one. I have switched this AP to channel 8 and I am seeing the drops and slowness go away, but I need to let it run for awhile to be able to tell for sure. Are any of the other channels I listed always bad channels to use? Why do you think I am having success with channel 8?

[scottmac]

When you "tune" the AP to a channel, it uses 25Mhz of bandwidth.

Each channel is only 5Mhz wide.

Channels 1, 6, and 11 don't overlap with each other, but using any other channel (2,3,4,5, 7,8,9,10) means that you will get interference from at least two other channels (either 1 and 6 or 6 and 11), as well as interfere with other APs working on those freqs.

Channel 11 is also very close to the frequency that some microwave ovens operate.

Channel 6 is the default for many consumer access points because it's "right in the middle."

Check out channel 1 in NS. Give it a try.

Good Luck

Scott

[smicale]

Well I have had my AP set to Channel 8 now for a day and a half and I am getting no drops at all. This is a good thing, but from your prior post you make it sound like channel 8 is a bad channel and shouldn't be used. I am confused as to why my problem has gone away since using this channel.