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I have a Linksys WRT54GC router and a Linksys WUSB54GC adapter.

The signal strength reported by the adapter seems to vary all over the
place for no apparent reason. Sometimes it gets so low that communication
is broken for a few minutes.

Is there an easy way to keep the signal strength high?

The two devices are only separated by about 15 feet. There is a wall-board
wall in between with a closet. Opening the closet door doesn't seem to
help.

"MyVeryOwnSelf" <> wrote in message
news:Xns97C388F1BD4E9RCLQUSHB976@216.196.97.136...
>I have a Linksys WRT54GC router and a Linksys WUSB54GC adapter.
>
> The signal strength reported by the adapter seems to vary all over the
> place for no apparent reason. Sometimes it gets so low that communication
> is broken for a few minutes.
>
> Is there an easy way to keep the signal strength high?
>
> The two devices are only separated by about 15 feet. There is a wall-board
> wall in between with a closet. Opening the closet door doesn't seem to
> help.

What other equipment using the same frequency is nearby? Cordless phones,
microwaves and so on.

From one of my posts last year:

You should bear in mind that the signal strength reported in the system tray
is actually the strength of 2.4GHz or 5GHz signals within receiving distance
of
the wireless card. This reading does not take into account Signal-to-Noise
ratio (SNR) and is not to
be taken as an indicator of wireless signal strength. A microwave magnetron
would cause this signal strength to show as excellent although the signal
would be mainly noise and the wireless signal itself would be very poor as a
result, for example.
If you run Netstumbler you will be able to see what the SNR is and will have
more
information to hand for troubleshooting:

http://www.netstumbler.com/


--
All the best,


Ryan Younger.


http://spaces.msn.com/members/wirelessnetworking/ - Ryan's Wireless
Networking Weblog


"MyVeryOwnSelf" <> wrote in message
news:Xns97C388F1BD4E9RCLQUSHB976@216.196.97.136...
>I have a Linksys WRT54GC router and a Linksys WUSB54GC adapter.
>
> The signal strength reported by the adapter seems to vary all over the
> place for no apparent reason. Sometimes it gets so low that communication
> is broken for a few minutes.
>
> Is there an easy way to keep the signal strength high?
>
> The two devices are only separated by about 15 feet. There is a wall-board
> wall in between with a closet. Opening the closet door doesn't seem to
> help.

Not that it helps you but I had exactly the same symptoms with a WUSB54G
adapter and a D-Link router, even in the same 10x10 room. The problem
remained unresolved but the D-link replacement adapters worked perfectly.

I recall reading that there are some problematic Linksys routers out there.
Particular hardware revisions within the same model series of router. Check
your model revision number and Google that to see if it is one of those.
There might be a firmware update to fix your problems or you might even be
better off replacing the router.

"MyVeryOwnSelf" <> wrote in message
news:Xns97C388F1BD4E9RCLQUSHB976@216.196.97.136...
>I have a Linksys WRT54GC router and a Linksys WUSB54GC adapter.
>
> The signal strength reported by the adapter seems to vary all over the
> place for no apparent reason. Sometimes it gets so low that communication
> is broken for a few minutes.
>
> Is there an easy way to keep the signal strength high?
>
> The two devices are only separated by about 15 feet. There is a wall-board
> wall in between with a closet. Opening the closet door doesn't seem to
> help.

> If you run Netstumbler you will be able to see what the SNR is and
> will have more information to hand for troubleshooting ...

Thanks for suggesting NetStumbler. Here are some troubleshooting
observations.


When things are working well:

a. NetStumbler reports SNR = 46 solidly; sometimes more, sometimes less.

b. Sometimes MSIE gets into "slow motion" mode, where everything goes
super-slow, but neither NetStumbler nor the wireless PC's status-reporting
tools (Linksys & WinXP) indicate a problem. Could be an unrelated problem.

c. Neither a wireless phone nor microwave oven affects NetScrambler.


Then, suddenly, there are gaps and the wireless PC loses connectivity. I
posted a NetScrambler screen shot on http://www.savefile.com/files/1355586
showing that the SNR breaks up. An outage starts.


During an outage:

d. NetStumbler doesn't detect any other access point.

e. Wireless PC's status-reporting tools (Linksys & WinXP) report "no
connection."

f. Wired PC operates normally through the same router.

g. Router's web-based admin pages show nothing unusual; router's lights
keep blinking.

h. Wireless PC's ipconfig reports "Media State: Media disconnected"

i. Using WinXP's wireless "repair" command (disables/enables NIC) doesn't
help.

j. Re-booting the wireless PC restores connectivity. At least it did in one
case, but it might've been coincidental timing.

k. In one case, NetStumbler showed the wireless link recovering by just
waiting about 30 minutes.


Configuration:
Linksys WRT54GC router, firmware v1.02.5
Linksys WUSB54GC wireless adapter
WPA2 Mixed Mode; TKIP+AES
Key Renewal: 3600 seconds (could there be a renewal glitch?)
Wireless MAC address filtering


Does any of this give a clue what's wrong and how to fix it?