Netgear ME102 signal strength

[amcintyr]

Hey,

I just purchased a Netgear wireless access point and PCMCIA card for my laptop, and I'm a little disappointed.

Most of the time, I'm working in the room next door to the access point - I'd say there's around eight feet and a brick wall between the AP and my laptop. My link quality is normally around 50% and I use the connection mainly for a shared internet connection. No problems here - I can make full use of my 600k broadband connection.

However, when I take the laptop out to the garden, I start to have problems. Between the access point and the garden, there's around 8ft of indoor sapace, a window, and then about 30 feet of outdoor space and some wooden fencing. If I sit about a foot inside the fence, I can just pick up a signal with poor link quality (<10%). An more than that, and there's no signal at all.

Given that the ME102 has a range of about 500ft indoors and 1600ft outdoors, this is a little less than I was expecting.

Could I have configured something wrongly? Or is there something up with my access point? Or is this sort of performance normal?

Thanks in advance for your help

[Greenstead]

the ME102 has a range of about 500ft indoors and 1600ft outdoors
Vendor claims for range are exaggerated...very exaggerated.

I use netgear.
I get an excellent connection in the next room (thro one wall).
I get a good connection at~5.5 Mbps in the garden about 30ft thro two walls.
I get very poor at~1Mbps 150 feet down the garden.

Still, you are getting worse than you should expect.

The positioning is critical. Nearby metal objects can affect the signal. Also interference from other signals.

Try changing the channel say to 11.
Try raising the ariel or just moving it around.

[ragman]

Those ranges that the manufacturer claim, are probably line of sight, under ideal conditions. In the "real world", those conditions are never met.

You might want to look into getting a signal booster for your AP.

[amcintyr]

Yeah, ragman, I realise that the manufacturer's numbers are for ideal conditions, but as Greenstead says, I'm probably getting worse than I should expect.

Even when I have a line of sight, I can't get a link past 30 feet.

I know companies exaggerate the figures, but could they really get away by a 5200% exageration?

[Greenstead]

IF you tried changing the channel and positioning, you could try calling Netgear support. It is rather poor support sometimes but they will run some checks by you, one will be have you got the latest firmware in the 102 and 401 which you can get from their website.

If all fails they should offer to swap the units for you.

[Ground0]

Wireless devices, typically from the 802.11b breed use microwave transmission as a medium. Microwave in itself is a medium which can suffer from quite a lot of environmental factors such as rain, snow etc. or from non-environmental factors such as interference from like devices in the same frequency spectrum, solid metal objects in the path of the signal etc.

[amcintyr]

OK - this is getting weirder. I've tried the things you suggested Greenstead but didn't really get any better results. Then I noticed that if the network cable is unplugged from the ME102, I get a link quality of 96%. Cable back in - link quality drops 40%.

Does this make any sense?

The access point is connected to the computer I use as a gateway via a 2m cross wire cable.

Any suggestions?

Thanks again,
Andrea

[Greenstead]

It doesn't really make sense to me, but it must be significant.

I am not sure what link quality is really measuring, but I think it takes into account packet errors. You might try using network stumbler on the PC which shows an ongoing signal to noise graphic.
http://www.netstumbler.com/

I cannot see why connecting the AP to the Host should have any affect on link quality. I think you should report that to Netgear. I think you have a defective AP (I guess).