What's Killing Your Wi-Fi? 248
Barence writes "PC Pro has taken an in-depth look at Wi-Fi and the factors that can cause connections to crumble. It dispels some common myths about Wi-Fi problems — such as that neighboring Wi-Fi hotspots are the most common cause of problems, instead of other RF interference from devices such as analogue video senders, microwave ovens and even fish tanks. The feature also highlights free and paid-for tools that can diagnose Wi-Fi issues, such as inSSIDer and Heatmapper, the latter of which maps provides a heatmap of Wi-Fi hotspots in your home or office."
Horrible link... (Score:4, Informative)
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Pc pro is a shit mag; what would you expect? I grew up on mags like pcw - they had assembly columns and maths sections etc. Now it's all recycled press releases and mp3 player reviews. No wonder they're dying.
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But worse, the "web IT press" is actually worse... I miss PCW and Byte. Mind you, I miss the Amiga as well.
Anyway - I'm a "desktop" person, so I tend to just use an ethernet cable... I know, but I'm not carrying these monitors into the lounge, so why does it matter?
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I second the vote for old PCW and Byte. I miss the codes you could type into debug on DOS, and things like Byte's CD full of compilers.... the stuff that inspired you to try some new programming language because you want to do something neat. Some of these old mags also developed some cool tools like notepad alternatives, disk format utilities, and things you might not always care about, but are useful.
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Tools for OS X and Linux (Score:4, Informative)
Both InSIDDer and Heatmapper are Windows-only, AFAIK. For Linux, there's the awesome Kismet [kismetwireless.net] and its cousin for OS X, KisMAC [kismac-ng.org].
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There is an InSSIDer for linux in alpha.
It does seem to work in Linux at least for me, it is alpha so YMMV.
http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/linux/ [metageek.net]
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Heatmapper got slashdoted (Score:2)
Its their fault (Score:5, Funny)
My wifi was going great... until the neighbours decided to secure their network
Re:Its their fault (Score:5, Funny)
You have the Really Long Cable option if they haven't secured their door.
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Forget XKCD, this calls for an oblig Sheldon [sheldoncomics.com].
...and even fishtanks... (Score:2)
I knew that goldfish was up to something!
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Microwave at 50m (Score:5, Interesting)
Research from the Farpoint Group suggests that data throughput can fall by 64% within 25ft of a microwave, and Farpoint analyst Craig Mathias said the firm had even “seen problems at 50m”.
I'm sorry but if this is the case you have far bigger problems with your microwave then simply WiFi interference.
RUN!
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I guess it depends on how old the microwave is. Some really old microwaves really kicked out EM fields.
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My parents have a working microwave from the early 80. It will kill any kind of transmission in the house but my parent wont replace it as any replacement they had was not as fast as this 2500W monster.... My current 1100W microwave kill the signal only if my laptop is resting at about 6 inch of it....
Impatience (Score:2)
It will kill any kind of transmission in the house but my parent wont replace it as any replacement they had was not as fast as this 2500W monster....
Because heaven forbid they wait an extra 20 seconds...
The Point (Score:2)
Because heaven forbid they wait an extra 20 seconds...
It's a microwave man; the whole point is speed. If you're going to suffer eating nuked food, you better damn well at least get a speed advantage out of it.
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you got it !
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2500 W? Where do they plug it in?
In any normal socket? My kettle [amazon.co.uk] even has 3.0 kW
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2500W / 240V is well under 13A; those are the relevant figures for the UK, Ireland etc. Rest of Europe you might assume 220V, but still under 13A, much less 16A for normal earthed sockets on the continent. But such high power is far from unusual; for example, ordinary kitchen kettles are plugged straight into a normal socket and generally draw 2200 watts.
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in a plug near the oven
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Not really. WiFi signals are very weak so it doesn't take much interference to degrade throughput.
Re:Microwave at 50m (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought most Slashdotters had a basic understanding of science? Non-ionising radiation is basically all the same. It doesn't matter if it comes from the magnetron in a microwave oven or your Wi-Fi AP. The only issue as to whether it will cook you is the power you absorb. Microwave ovens tend to run in the range of 500-1000+ watts of power, your AP probably puts out below 5 watts. It doesn't take much to figure out that minor and completely safe levels of leakage from the microwave will heavily interfere with Wi-Fi.
Of course I have actually had RF burns from playing with radios so I am not terrified of non-ionising radiation like luddites are.
Re:Microwave at 50m (Score:4, Interesting)
The Orville Redenbacher Test (Score:2)
Some urban legend is circulating that this will work for radiation, but it will definitely work for WiFi interference: Set a bag of microwave popcorn out on the counter. If it starts popping, you've probably got WiFi interference problems.
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It should be, and usually is. The obvious sign of that is, the signal is blocked all the time, when the metal box (microwave) is between the AP and the client. If it isn't in the "line of sight", a leaky microwave will still cause interference.
I had a friend with an old microwave. We'd talk for about an hour at a time, various times in our conversation, he may throw a cup of water in the microwave to make coffee. As soon as he hit the start button, all I'd hear was inter
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Well, that 100mW depends on the AP.
A lot of them are only running at 80mw or less. I just did a quick search. The Linksys WAP54G puts out 16.5dBm for 802.11b, or approx 44.67mW. The WRT54G puts out 42mW, but you can crank that up past 100mW through some simple hacks. I use the Tomato firmware, which lets me set it from 1mW to 250mW. For the best signal to my relay AP, I leave it set to 200mW. That's enough to push through the walls, without causing signal distortion.
Early 20th Century (Score:2)
affinity for lathe and plaster.
What is killing my wifi (Score:5, Interesting)
Crap firmware and products.
That is what is killing my wifi.
I would also like to add:
1) Wall Street fascist pig CEO types who need that 5th mansion and stupid Board directors and shareholders who let him get away with it while the companies network infrastructure rots to hell.
That doesn't help my wifi either.
2) Closed proprietary crap hardware primarily by CISCO that makes it impossible to produce decent firmware via a 3rd party even after you bought the damn thing.
Apparently in a fascist system you really don't get to own anything you buy and can go to jail if you try and figure out how it works or make your own improvements.
Poor WRT guys, how they must suffer. Even though they work really hard, their firmware still sucks because the binary blobs they get with the radios suck it and my Wireless N router (WRT600N) still, has to auto reboot every 24 hours or it just plain stops working.
3) Finally I would like to thank all of the fascist members in Congress for creating laws that pretty much guarantees our wifi will suck.on a country wide basis, insuring intellectual property nonsense will continue to make wifi blow.
-Hack
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While I agree with your ranting, I have a more productive solution.
For years I put up with crap box all in one WiFi/Routers that would fall over almost daily (in multiple locations as we had moved house) (the reboot walk).
My solution:
Cable Modem -> Crap Box AllInOne (But only for the NAT function) -> Dedicated Cheap Gigabit Ethernet Switch -> POE Ubiquti UniFi AP
My printer (Ethernet) and NAS (Synology DS211J) plug direct into the Ethernet Switch.
Finally a setup that is cheap and doesn't crash. Been
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Poor WRT guys, how they must suffer. Even though they work really hard, their firmware still sucks because the binary blobs they get with the radios suck it and my Wireless N router (WRT600N) still, has to auto reboot every 24 hours or it just plain stops working.
I have used OpenWRT and was impressed but not happy.
Then I used DD-WRT and I was happy but not ecstatic.
Since my hardware happens to be compatible I was able to switch to Tomato, and now I am at least very happy, if not... well you get the idea. WDS is finally working for me, for example. So this might not help you, but some might be pleased. I try to wire any bandwidth hog...
Re:What is killing my wifi (Score:4, Interesting)
Consumer-grade wireless is shit. We use Cisco 1130 AGs and they are the shit.
[...]
they are fucking rock solid. However, they cost like $600.
1. Cosumer = shit. Commercial = the shit. o_O Same "shit" much?
2. So what you're saying is that Cisco distances itself from the intentionally crippled consumer hardware via slapping the name Linksys on it, so that when someone buys the slightly better non-crippled hardware they can charge $600 for it -- do you really think that it's 10,000% (Ten Thousand Percent!?) better than the consumer grade device? -- or, would you agree that it's arbitrary price inflation based on pretty much the same design?
3. Why don't they just make good routers across the board, it would lower their cost to manufacture esp. in volume -- Oh, right, profit margins, never mind.
I think we've Identified the culprits. WiFi sucks because the manufacturers want it to suck. Guess what? A dime bag of cocaine, or a pirated copy of Windows is cheap too -- It's when you become a Pro at snorting lines or using Windows or running a network that the price becomes prohibitively expensive... At least with the drugs, when you "go pro" the price may get cheaper the more you use.
Make no mistake, consumer grade WiFi is marginally adequate expressly because it can be. People get used to the convenience of WiFi at home, but when they want to take it to work: Business can not afford to have flaky WiFi. Ergo the ten thousand percent price hike per unit -- You're already hooked -- if you want the clean stuff not cut with rat poison, baking soda, faulty capacitors, overheating chips, and weak antenna coils (so that you can use more like a pro and get a pure, reliable WiFi-high without O.D.ing) you'll have to pay big time.
What's killing your Wi-Fi (Score:4, Funny)
What's killing your Wi-Fi? Or rather, who? *maniacal laughter*
Mini Portable Signal Jammer (Wi-Fi/GPS) [dealextreme.com]
Obligatory XKCD (Score:4, Funny)
Nachos [xkcd.com]
5GHz, or wired (Score:4, Informative)
Go wired (gigabit) when you can -- that's faster and more secure.
If you're forced to run on 2.4, don't expect great things in crowded (spectrum) areas. Do spectrum scans, and if you can't work with one of the non-overlapping 2.4GHz channels (1,6,11), and can't use a directional antenna (you can build your own corner reflector or parabolic reflector for under $1) try 3 or 8 and don't worry about HT (high throughput) datarates.
Take up arc welding as a hobby.
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5ghz wont do you any good if you have lots of walls, as it just bounces off them.
I tried, it doesnt work unless you are trying to saturate a large open area.
Er... (Score:2)
My 8 year old Airport base station dying, that's what killed it.
Bad/cheap routers is another problem (Score:2)
Not mentioned in this article was the problem of people operating poor quality routers. Ironically enough that they quoted a rep from Belkin in the article, cheap $30 routers from the likes of Belkin, D-Link and such from the local Wal-Mart electronic section tend to have a bad habit of "dropping out", or freezing traffic to the point to where the only solution is to power off and power on the router. On some bad quality routers this happens nearly 100% of the time under heavy traffic loads (2 or more com
Baby monitor kills mine (Score:3, Insightful)
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110693416818&clk_rvr_id=236365054762 [ebay.co.uk]
Seems quite common, I work in IT and now and again I get asked do you know why my wiresless network is so crap and a lot of the times they've just had a baby.
Re:Baby monitor kills mine (Score:4, Interesting)
I work as a service tech for a local telco, I frequently go out to fix people's wireless when they can't figure out what's wrong, baby monitors and other people's wifi do kill the signal, but usually not badly enough to be a major problem, simply changing the channel on the AP or moving the equipment a few feet usually solves it.
Microwave ovens are a big deal, but usually only in close proximity to them, or if it is directly between the computer and the AP.
What has always amazed me more is how badly various other household appliances can affect networks, and I'm not just talking wireless either, I've had cases where a hand mixer in the next room was able to make streaming video unwatchable on an ethernet cabled computer. And a customer who watched streaming video while on the treadmill required a lot of creative work to get a signal through even on ethernet. (turns out the problem was actually interference on the power line side of things, a UPS on the computer and moving the treadmill to a circuit on the other half of the electrical panel eventually solved it)
Basically, consumer gear is garbage, everything from hand mixers and treadmills to computers and routers. sometimes you can work around it, sometimes you just can't.
Gold Dust! (Score:5, Funny)
In my carefully controlled laboratory (the basement of my parent's house), I decided to try things that would enhance the wireless connectivity. "Scientists" tend to only focus on the negative. Who wants to read something that very craftily calls us idiots? Summary of article the article I didn't read: "Want better wireless? Get rid of the microwave, dumb ass!"
I'm going to write a paper. But my parents want me to clean up the basement first. I don't feel like it ...... so its going to take a while. :)
In writing this more positive paper, I felt gold dust would be the best stuff to sprinkle in the air to enhance wireless signals. After all, this stuff works *MIRACLES* for stereo cables and computer cables. Why not wireless signals?
So I installed some fans in the basement to blow the gold dust around while testing my wireless network. I tried 3 different gold samples. 1) Gold bought from Dollar Store. 2) Gold bought from Pawn Shop. 3) Gold extracted from Monster Cables.
Total cost of materials (gold): $2000*. Acquiring gold from the first two sources was much cheaper than the 3rd (see Marketing Materials as reference).
I'm not going to bore you with the methodology. "What was the purity of the samples?", you might ask. I trust I'm getting 100% Gold from all my sources. They told me it is.
Suffice it to say, my paper will conclude (I'm not done looking at most if of the results just yet and don't think I need to) that sprinkling gold dust in the air boosted wireless signals up to 2 x 10 ^ 3 % (this is a scientific study so I must use scientific notation!). I'll leave the reader to conclude which of the 3 sources resulted in the best results. Frankly, I lost track.
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Did you compare your gold solution with wifi spray? http://j-walk.com/other/wifispray/ [j-walk.com]
here's some things that jam wifi (Score:3)
xbox 360 controllers.
ps3 controllers.
bluetooth.
electrical motors for ceiling fans.
cordless phones in the 2.4Ghz range.
cheap RC cars/planes/helicopters.
Your paper shredder, while it's running.
your 5 neighbors' wifis all on channel 6.
CFL bulbs. (They tend to absorb radio signals.)
All of these will interfere with wifi. Perhaps you should switch to 5Ghz 802.11N
Network Down (Score:4, Interesting)
Back in the day...
When WiFi was just starting to get rolled out in most businesses, I had set up a multi access-point wireless network that had worked really well for about five months. Then, with no known changes, it started dying across the entire building almost every afternoon about the same time.
I worked with the building maintenance staff to try to find any electrical gear that might be starting up about that time with no luck. Finally, because the executives loved their wireless, I had to buy a spectrum analyser to try to track down the problem. I kept it on my desk until the next time we had an outage and started following the high amplitude broadband noise that had suddenly appeared.
The directional antenna led me straight to the kid that worked in the mailroom who had his feed up on the desk talking into a wireless phone. I pulled the plug on it and the noise stopped, the network reappeared. He'd brought in a consumer wireless phone so he could talk to his girlfriend while he moved around the mailroom sorting mail. I'm surprised his hair wasn't smoking with the signal the thing was emitting.
I took it away from him and everyone, except maybe his girlfriend, was happy. :)
what i learned from wifi (Score:3)
this router has a rubber ducky antenna so while searching for a way to improve my signal quality i found this and it really does work, now when someone is sitting at the office desk near the router it does not weaken the signal and the overall signal averages about 85% solid without problems
build one of these out of heavy paper like card stock or similar (cereal box cardboard) and aluminum foil http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/ [freeantennas.com]
samsung hometheater (Score:3)
have one with 2 wireless speakers for the back channels.... I loved it while i was oblivious to the fact that it kill wifi in a 3ft radius!
...until i tried to play online on the wii.
Now i have to choose if I want 5.1 audio or multiplayer.
Number 1 Cause... (Score:3)
... mismatched devices!
You would not believe how many people "upgrade" their broadband to 20+ Mbit/sec service and then complain that their computer is still only getting 1-3Mbit/sec speeds. A lot of them don't realize that the older 802.11 devices can significant reduce the performance of a modern wireless network.
Most 802.11b devices (which are still in use today) usually top out at around 10-11Mbit/sec, and that's under perfect conditions. If you start adding multiple users, competing networks and outside interference, things get out of hand pretty quick.
Here's a list of things to look for in examining your wireless network for performance issues:
- Replace the router.
If you're router is over 3 years old, it might be time to replace it. Especially if it's an older 802.11a/b model. The really old 802.11 devices, like Apple's original AirPort base station, have a lot of problems working correctly when they encounter other networks within their own service range. This can result in dropped or spotty connections and overall losses in bandwidth. Many of these first generation wireless network devices barely worked, but they worked well enough for the few people that could afford them. Most of these devices have since been trashed for more recent models either because they started failing under the weight of other networks or simply died from various flaws or age.
- Update the firmware.
Many wireless devices have firmware chips on them that can be upgraded through software. This can help weed out networking issues that might be caused by buggy firmware, or may add enhanced features that can help your device work better under heavier loads from competing networks, interference, multiple users and various security issues.
- upgrade all client-end networking hardware at the same time.
When putting a wireless network together, or upgrading an existing one, make sure your client devices use similar configurations. (Or identical, if possible...) A single, poorly configured client device can significantly impact your wireless network's performance. By making the network devices functionally similar to each other, the simpler it will be to put together an efficient network setup. For example, if you have a network consisting of only 802.11g devices and set up a router to only accept 802.11g connections, it'll run at around 54Mbit/sec. But, if you have a network consisting of random 802.11 devices and a router that will support several protocols going back to 802.11b, the network will default to using the slowest, most common protocol available (802.11b) and will force all connected clients to run at that speed (11Mbit/sec), regardless of each client's individual configuration. That bandwidth is then divided by every connection, making then network seem much slower than it is. By keeping the client and router hardware similarly configured, the network speeds are less likely to suffer. Your maximum network performance is limited only by the hardware you use to build it.
- Secure your network.
Make sure your network hardware is secure on both the router and client end. Set up your router to use the most powerful encryption protocols it supports and utilize MAC address detection to identify each piece of hardware on the network, so you can ensure no one outside of your client list can access your network. Also, don't use DHCP to assign IP addresses. Manually configure each client, so they have a static IP. Finally, disable SSID broadcasting. This will reduce the likelihood of a war-driver finding your network and tagging it for others to find.
- Use the latest available network protocols.
Using protocols like 802.11g or 802.11n may help to significantly improve your network speeds over older ones, but may also offer some added flexibility. Unlike the older 802.11b/a protocols, some of the newer protocols aren't limited to one broadcast frequency (2.4GHz). While the broadcast frequency of your wireless hardware has relatively little to do with your netw
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Weird, mine doesn't. Are you sure it's safe?
Re:microwave (Score:5, Informative)
ditto. take a fluorescent bulb to microwave and shut off light sources. If the bulb starts to glow replace the microwave.
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Mod parent up interesting. I knew that light bulbs light up in the microwave, but I never put it together so you could test leaking microwaves with it.
Also if the microwave is leaking hard, the light bulb may explode (as if you put it in the microwave), but this takes a lot of energy or time, so turn it off immediately when a positive leak test result is found.
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Have you ever taken a flourescent tube and held it under high power transmission lines? Something like this [exponent.com].
Depending on the current load and the height of the lines, you can get it to light up pretty close to the ground. I've done it while standing on the ground (tube at 3 to 5 feet AGL). Sometimes it required standing on the car and holding it straight up (tube at about 8 to 10 feet AGL). You'd be surprised to find out what's there, that you can't see.
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You mean something like this [doobybrain.com]?
I have a friend who works at a large bakery. They use big microwave ovens to make cookies. One of his favorite tricks, before all glass was banned from the floor, was carry a fluorescent tube around near the ovens to scare the new guy. I guess they light up pretty brilliantly. :)
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Nice pictures. :) Obviously the lines are too low, or under a heavy load.
For reference, in case anyone wonders, it's not necessary to put them to ground (neither electrically and physically). When I did it, I held it in my hand, holding it by the glass part of the tube. The only reason for doing that was that the metal part isn't really all that big. :) Standing on the car, I was insulated from the ground by the tires, but since the metal ends weren't touching anything at a
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you probably were not insulated from the ground by the tyres as most tyres these days conduct electricity
google it for more
Cell phone (Score:3)
put the cell phone in the microwave, close the door, if you call and it rings, u have a leak
another trick on smartphone is to install some kind of wifi analyzer and put it in microwave, close the door and watch signal strength
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Forgot the disclaimer, Do not turn on the microwave while the phone is in.
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Watch a spectrum analyzer when there's a microwave running. Entire channels just annihilated by the noise from it.
Crappy portable phones are fun to watch too. Not the full scale nuclear armageddon of the microwave but I'd say noisy enough to be tac-nukes.
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Several years ago, I had two pairs of cordless phones (house line and business line), and my wireless network. The house itself was very quiet as far as RF went. We were fairly isolated, with only one house adjoining us, and they didn't have anything wireless.
The house line and cordless line ran perfectly happily together at 2.4Ghz. Then I bought the new phones for the business line. It too was 2.4Ghz. As soon as I plugged it in, it killed the network and house phone. It was like
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What I've seen is a high but narrow spike wandering back and forth across the spectrum. That's with a conventional magnetron. It probably just overwhelms the front end of the receiver rendering all the fancy spread-spectrum stuff moot.
I'd expect an "inverter" microwave to be more like you've described, but I've never seen one.
Re:microwave (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd have that microwave looked at, because I have no problem streaming video right next to my microwave to a wifi tablet.
Maybe you have a leak? Any appliance store has detectors, most will rent them to you.
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Ahh, but what frequency is your Wi-Fi? (Is it 802.11A, 802.11G or 802.11N?) Makes a HUGE difference.
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Do you mean your microwave oven? Contact the manufacturer and make them send someone out to run a microwave leakage test. The service center is required to have a properly calibrated one. The test may not be free but they should not charge more than a service call but see if the manufacturer will cover this test.
Switching power supplies used in these microwaves can cause trouble regardless of the FCC warning on them. You can get noise from the supply and noise on the power line even though it's not otherwis
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I don't have to worry about the baby monitor part.. ours are in the 434MHz range, and I know that because I can hear the remote start signal every time I remote start or lock/unlock the doors lol
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Have you tried using NDISwrapper? I haven't tried it myself, but if you are able to use the same driver as in Windows, everything *should* work the same way.
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Have you tried using NDISwrapper? I haven't tried it myself, but if you are able to use the same driver as in Windows, everything *should* work the same way.
It does work the same way - badly!
Re:Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing in this story talks about Linux.
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Oh, I don't know, I've never had a wifi based machine that would not work under linux.
Occasionally I've had to load ndiswrapper, but in the end every one of them worked.
Lately most distros figure this out by themselves, and load what ever is necessary, fetch the firmware and do the whole
nine yards.
Still, windows-centric drivers are manufacturer problem, not just a linux problem, and one that even they are starting to realize
is not going to cut it going forward.
On the other hand, I've actually been forced to
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A friend was having a problem trying to get wireless working on his Linux laptop. Turns out the ssb module had to be blacklisted as it would interfere with the wireless system. He could do it (manually messing around with the necessary .conf file), but it's still a joke and completely demolishes the argument that Linux is ready for the desktop.
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One swallow does not a summer make.
I've had similar odd driver related problems problems with windows machines.
Does that "complete demolish" the argument that windows is ready for the desktop?
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Which is why I only use Atheros chipsets. Rock solid Linux support since the 2000's using madwifi drivers. Such a same that Broadcom is cheaper, so most integrated chipsets/cheap hardware use it. Intel's wireless is ok on Linux. Not as good as Atheros (prone to firmware resets on my Thinkpad, but with no noticable loss of connection, as it resets immediately) but perfectly usable.
This doesn't help you now, but for future reference (and for other readers), stay the hell away from Broadcom for Linux. Useless
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You've had unlucky experiences, or your trolling...
On all of the machines i've tried in the last couple of years (atheros, broadcom, realtek and ralink chipsets), wireless has worked out of the box under Ubuntu (and in some cases i have used gentoo successfully with wifi), whereas Windows hasn't always supported the wireless card out of the box (which makes downloading the drivers a pain), and other weird problems like the drivers supporting wep but not wpa (i thought it was up to the os rather than the dri
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I find that wireless works fine out of the box on kubuntu. as long as you aren't trying to connect to a hidden network with a space in it's name... I have yet to find any way to do that under kubuntu except manually on the command line, and even that's hit and miss. This goes for the past 3 major releases.
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What is the actual use of Analog Video Senders anyway?
Is this what is being advertised for start watching in one room and finish in another from various cable providers?
I note that back in 2009 when a dimilar story was posted it was baby monitors [slashdot.org] that were taking the blame, even tho video senders were mentioned back then as well.
Re:Analog Video Senders make great jammers (Score:5, Informative)
They used to work by just transmitting an analog TV signal that any TV in range could pick up with a loop antenna, but those were banned years ago due to interference issues (And, according to rumor, a few incidents of pornography ending up on the neighbour's TV). The new ones operate up in 2.4GHz band, killing wireless networks.
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Get an STB which supports streaming over IP such as a dreambox or a custom built linux box...
Then you have a choice, ethernet, powerline adapters, wifi (still using 2.4ghz but in a cleaner way) etc. You can change the channel remotely on them too.
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Why don't you just buy another STB for the other room? Since you're likely to be plugging it into a relatively small TV then cheap crappy SD STB will work just fine. You can pick up an el-cheapo DVB-S STB for about (can't type a pound sign, since slashcode has a horrible regression)10 these days.
ATTENTION SLASHDOT JANITORS: YOUR SITE HAS A REGRESSION. I filed a bug months ago. Fix non-ASCII characters, or at least put them back the way they were.
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That only works if you don't need magical decryption (e.g. digicipher 2, like my satellite provider uses) crap in the STB.
also, try £ to get a £
same works for euro and yen signs.
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They're used a lot for half-assed CCTV systems, with applications ranging from video baby monitors, to security video, to hidden pedobear spy cams. The cheap ones are generally pretty ugly unless the planets align just-so, and tend to shit all over whatever band they're using.
There are a few companies that produce more professional versions of such devices, which include very directional, polarized antennas. These play a little nicer with the RF spectr
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I have.. I can't watch Hulu or anything in the kitchen while I'm waiting for something to microwave. The signal just craps out (stays connected, but there's just too much noise over the signal). That's even with the router less than 25' away down stairs, though the microwave would be about 10' away.
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Buy a new microwave oven: sounds like it is leaking badly!
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Your microwave should not leak any signals/radiation... The inside of a microwave is basically a faraday cage (look at the metal mesh which runs through the glass on a typical microwave door).
If it does leak radiation, then its faulty and you really should get it repaired or replaced ASAP as it can be quite dangerous (wifi cards are typically under 1 watt of power, a microwave could be up to 1300 watts and the full force of one will cook you quite quickly).
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Sadly there are plenty of crummy microwaves that will cause trouble with your wifi, at least if your access point is near the microwave. I saw this pretty frequently while working tech support a bunch of years back (right around the time when everyone wanted wireless even if their computer was next to their NAT router).
Now, I didn't ever see it be the only source of signal loss but for those who already had a fairly weak signal placing the AP near the microwave did occasionally result in their connection dr
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I suspect that most people who have trouble with microwaves are people who have very bad reception anyway - their laptop or other machine being in a position (either due to distance, materials between them and the router, other sources of interfe
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A faraday cage attenuates RF. It doesn't eliminate it completely. You'd need perfect conductors for that.
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This is not at all true. There shouldn't be substantial RF leakage, but it would be an impressive accomplishment to not leak ANY RF energy, especially given the high power involved. Even tempest-hardened environments leak plenty. There as here, the main culprit tends to be the power lines... They make good antennas, carrying RF signals from inside the metal box, to the outside world.
And as for danger, sure, it could be dangerous, but we're talking
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a microwave could be up to 1300 watts and the full force of one will cook you quite quickly).
Oh come on. Even in open air, with no shielding, the power density of a 1.3kW magnetron falls below that of normal sunlight at somewhere under two feet.
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The shielding of a microwave is designed to prevent it from cooking you, not to block the tiny bit of leakage that interferes with wifi
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Why don't people talk more about using a wire to an access point to get the wireless where you want it ?
Because of the difficulty of stringing wires thru finished construction, especially when you rent.
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I live in an apartment building constructed with concrete and steel beams. Although it's not a huge place, the signal would die outside of the AP's room. A cheap, probably $30 repeater fixed everything,
Look into the nitty gritty technical specs before you buy one though. The box may say, for example, that it supports WPA2 -- and it does, but only when acting as an access point. If repeating you may be stuck with WEP; that means your entire network must be downgraded to WEP. Read the manual on-line befo
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Keep in mind too that you're only seeing one end of the conversation. S/N ratio can be good for the downstream (AP --> Laptop/client radio) but crapola for the other direction (client --> AP) and you won't ever see it unless you're monitoring the AP side of the conversation.
Run into that one every now and again. User has good signal, but the laptop just isn't getting to the AP.
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1) Don't run ethernet through the walls, run it through at the bottom of the baseboard. drill through as low as you can get the drill to go, and push your runs under the base, around to the hole, then through.
2) Paint the visible parts of the cable (about 1.5 inches near each hole) the same color as your baseboard.
3) ???
4) Profit.