Could someone be jamming me???

[RangerScott]

Ok here's the deal. I got a SMC7004AWBR wireless router w/ several Linksys WET11 bridges and several Linksys WMP11 PCI adapters. When, I first setup this network (about 1.5 years ago) everything was great. Good speed, good access.

Fast forward to about 3 months ago... Link Quality on my bridges are going through the floor. Signal strength on everything going down.

I changed my SSID, I changed my channel, I even killed my WEP (orginally it was at 128 bit)(at the insistance of my landlady). I'm still getting hit. I live in northern VA. Every instinct inside of me, says we are being hit by some sort of interference.

My question is is there anyway to fight this (besides trying to put the house in a Faraday cage)???

Thanks in advance,
Scott

[cszeto]

You may be in the path of someone's long distance 2.4 GHz shot. Unfortunately, since it's an unregulated band, there's not much that can be done. If it was a regulated band, then the local FCC may be able to assist.

As a long shot, you might check with the local airport, to see if they may be experiencing something similar. If they are and it affects any of their equipment, then they might be able to go to bat for you. It's a very long shot, but that's about the only recourse in stopping someone from "jamming" you on an unregulated band.

Have you tried relocating your AP?

[tntoak]

ONe thing to consider is that the 11 channels 802.11x networking use averlap somewhat. In fact, tradition convention holds that in a corporate setting, you can only use 3 channels for your network to avoid crossovers and collisions (although that is starting to switch to 4 channels out of the 11). If there are other people w/ wireless networks near you, you might have crosstalk interference between the various channels.

You mgiht want to try to find out if anyone else is using wireless networking near you, and go from there. Also, it struck me as odd that your landlady would ask you to remove the encryption from your network...

...one thing you might want to do is to set up the router to only allow certain mac addresses to access the router. That way, even w/ no encryption, someone can't just drive by and piggyback your network...

[RangerScott]

tntoak wrote:

You might want to try to find out if anyone else is using wireless networking near you, and go from there. Also, it struck me as odd that your landlady would ask you to remove the encryption from your network... <end quote>

Yes, there are like 6 other networks in my area. As for the encryption, you're right. Although, it is known that WEP will lower throughput and speed. I think the reason why she insisted on this is because, we were the only one in this area using it. In theory, (only theory mind you), someone may think we were doing something terroristic (for lack of a better term) with our network. Which of course we are not.

<quote)...one thing you might want to do is to set up the router to only allow certain mac addresses to access the router. That way, even w/ no encryption, someone can't just drive by and piggyback your network...<end quote>

Don't worry, I have MAC address filtering enabled. I WILL NOT allow my network to be completely unprotected.

Scott