On Jan 11, 2008, at 10:03 AM, johnny wrote:
Hi, in my flat there are 1 router, 1 range extender, 2 vista, 1 XP and my 2 linux ubuntu (one of which is mail/samba/nfs/etc server, is monitored via mrtg and contains a lot of music/movies). All, wireless. The problem: when I listen to music or watch movies from my laptop (my flatmates idem) the results are not so good... many freezes...
It's actually pretty hard to get the full bandwidth that 802.11g promises.
In particular, there can't be any other networks on the same channel, or on overlapping channels. (802.11 signals are three channels wide, so networks on adjacent channels affect yours.) A scanning tool such as Kismet can be helpful in picking a clear channel. If you have lots of close neighbors it may be impossible to find one. In that case using 802.11a, which runs on a different frequency band, may be an option. (Assuming the 5 GHz band is legal to use in your country.)
You can't have any 802.11b devices on the network if you want to get full speed. They greatly slow things down just by virtue of the 802.11b packets taking longer to transmit, thus tying up the network for longer.
Other devices that use the 2.4 GHz band can also cause problems for 802.11g. These include microwave ovens and some wireless phones. Again, switching to 802.11a may be an option if this turns out to be your problem.