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Re: Airport quality levels?



Michel Lanners wrote:
> 
> On  17 Apr, this message from Nicholas Ingolia echoed through cyberspace:
> > I and others I know get similar numbers and have perfect wireless
> > performance.
> 
> OK, thanks. Are your Link Quality readings comparable as well?
> 
> > Are you aware that the signal and noise numbers are in logarithmic units,
> > meaning that the signal is more than 1000-fold stronger than the
> > noise?
> 
> Oh yes, I know db calculations quite well. What struck me is that the
> Link Quality reading is consistently at something like 30% (i.e. 30/92),
> which does seem rather poor. If the -60dbm receive level is normal, then
> why leave so much room in the quality scale?

michdaen@pismo> iwconfig                                                     ~
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

eth1      IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:"public"  Nickname:"HERMES I"
          Frequency:2.442GHz  Sensitivity:1/3  Mode:Managed  
          Access Point: 00:40:96:38:53:3C
          Bit Rate:11Mb/s   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off   
          Power Management:off
          Link quality:38/92  Signal level:-54 dBm  Noise level:-92 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  invalid crypt:0  invalid misc:0

Notice that -54 - -92 = 38 . Get the idea? :)


OTOH the wireless plugin for gkrellm is showing quality around 200, dunno what
that number means...


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer (MrCooper)    \   Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc) developer
CS student, Free Software enthusiast   \        XFree86 and DRI project member



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