Re: Weird wireless problems

[Nirmal Govind <nirmalg@psu.edu>]

> The problem is we don't really know what value returned by the card's
> firmware is 100 % ;)

Very tricky situation huh.. 

> or maybe you just use a tool to measure network speed at certain
> positions (in the worst case just copy some file over the network)

Yes, I can certainly find the average time to ping a server using linux and 
then do the same in OSX and compare the numbers.. will report what I find..

> OK' and below noise... I'm not entirely sure it is not an electrical
> problem with the internal Airport/antenna cabling.

I was also wondering abt this.... I did some experimentation and it turns out 
that if the wireless_mode is set to Auto then I have the problem of a highly 
fluctuating signal with the average signal being very poor.. if I set the 
mode to Managed, the average signal is much better and doesn't fluctuate much 
at all... wonder if this is how it's supposed to function..

I also compared the signal strength in a machine (Thinkpad to be more precise) 
running Windows XP with a wireless card at the same location.. it had a much 
higher percentage than what I had even when the mode was set to Managed.. but 
again, as Ben pointed out, the numbers given by the wireless card on Windows 
may not be true..

I'll post the results of more experiments soon...

Thanks,
nirmal