Code This

Borrowing a phrase from Jerry Seinfeld, I have to rant a bit… what’s with wireless?  Being an avid linux fan, I’m used to wasting hours troubleshooting obscure, and what seem to be impossible, issues.  But I always seem to have some sort of problem with my wireless configuration.  It’s not that complicated, why does it never seem to work quite right?

I had a linksys router and wireless NIC that just did not want to talk to each other.  The signal wasn’t bad, I had an IP address, my gateway and DNS servers were all setup correctly through DHCP, yet for some reason I could not even ping my router.  I know each piece worked independently (through testing against other devices), just not together.  So I used linksys’s live online help.  The support person tells me the NIC I’m using doesn’t support Windows Vista 64-bit.  1. Vista has been around for over 2 years now, get with the program.  2. It was working before, so it’s obviously possible to get it to work.  Lets just say I returned that hardware for some netgear equipment.

Of course I got the “Range Max” version of the wireless router.  It’s supposed to work throughout the entire house.  I have a 2 bedroom apartment.  I get almost no signal on my desktop that’s maybe 30 – 40 feet away from the router, no major obstructions in the way.  Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. =/

UPDATE: After looking into the issue a little more, there appear to be 10 – 20 wireless networks at my apartment complex in range of my desktop.  Since there are only 3 wireless channels that do not interfere with one another, this is obviously an issue.  Eventually I had to purchase a separate D-Link wireless antenna to increase the coverage at my desktop, and switch my wireless to a channel that would have the least amount of interference.  The net result: I have a decent signal, and am getting 6000+ Kb/s from dslreports.com.  Another option would have been to go with equipment that supports 802.11 n, but this standard is still in draft and the equipment is quite expensive.