Weird wireless problems

[Nirmal Govind <nirmalg@psu.edu>]

Hi.. I'm using an Apple Airport card on my ibook (800Mhz, Nov 2002).. I have a 
Netgear router at home that is connected to a cable modem.. I'm having a 
weird problem where the signal strength randomly goes down to 0% from around 
40%... the only solution I've been able to find is this - if I close the lid 
and then open it up again, the signal strength returns to around 40%.. doing 
ifdown eth1 and ifup eth1 (w/o closing the lid) doesn't help.. I thought this 
may have something to do with the airport card but it turns out that this 
problem doesn't exist if I boot up in OSX directly (while at the same 
spot)... I think this problem started a few days after I got a Kensington 
optical wireless mouse (with the small USB receiver).. however I have 
verified that this problem now occurs even if the mouse/receiver is not 
connected to the ibook..

On a related note, when I'm running linux (ben10 kernel), the signal strength 
that I get in my living room is around 40%, however when I run in OSX, the 
signal strenght is full (all bars)... when in linux, if I raise my ibook to a 
higher altitute, the signal strength goes up, if I lower it, the signal goes 
down considerably.. however there's always a strong signal (much higher than 
the max. I get in linux) if I'm booted up directly in OSX...  I have 
wireless-tools installed (so I have iwconfig etc.)... the signal strength is 
monitored by Kwavecontrol. The relevant part of my /etc/network/interfaces 
file is as follows:

auto  lo
       iface lo inet loopback

    iface  eth1 inet dhcp
         pre-up modprobe airport
         post-down rmmod airport
         post-down rmmod orinoco
         post-down rmmod hermes
         wireless_essid any
        wireless_mode Managed
        wireless_ap any
         wireless_nick ibookNG
         wireless_key off


Has anyone experienced similar problems before? Any resolutions to this? 

Thanks,
nirmal