Gaaaaaaaaah!
Being a techie type, I feel it is my inalienable right to have an 802.11b wireless LAN in my home. But the Gods of Wireless have been working hard to thwart these plans…
First there was the Panasonic cordless phone that killed all 802.11 traffic within 100 miles every time it went off-hook. Okay. Fine. I wrote the damn thing off (gifted it, actually, to someone without 802.11 aspirations), and bought a set of Vtech cordless phones that didn’t SEEM to have the same problem. Besides, these guys all advertise spread-spectrum this, and collision-avoidance that. Phooey.
For whatever reason, I still can’t get the wireless signal to go from the back of this teensy little apartment to the room in the front. Has a lot to do with the layout, and the ancient plaster walls full of old wood and chicken wire… But still, frustrating. And the wiring in this place (built around the turn of the century) is just too awful to describe adequately here. Electrical is awful - phone wiring didn’t exist AT ALL until I moved in. Had to run my own… I really can’t figure out what all the prior tenants did. Well, those just prior had a single phone line running in through a crack in the “living room” window. Seriously.
Anyhow, thinking I was too clever by half - too clever maybe even by two-thirds - I bought a Linksys Signal Booster for my Linksys (WAP11) Wireless Access Point. I finally got the thing, and hooked it up (trivial - just a big, powered, 2.4 GHz antenna really), and watched the signal strength DROP. Yes, DROP. From less than five feet away, I see my signal go from (close to) 100% down to 40-50%, and in the far room at the front of the building, where I was getting 5-10% signal (and frequently none at all), I went straight down into “absolutely none at all” territory.
I’m thinking of shutting down all the Vtech units and trying again, just to rule out some kind of “signal escalation” war going on between the WAP and the phones… But this is really annoying.
I will defeat this damn thing. I will defeat this damn thing. I will defeat this damn thing.
February 25th, 2003 at 7:12 am
What iteration are you at at this point in the battle? As best I can figure it’s Dan Vs. The Evil WIFI Monster Part III, Son of WIFI - The Sequel..but I wanna make sure I catch all the sequels..
And then you have all the fun of making it war-proof too.
Or are you gonna let anyone on, in a communal network sorta philosophy?
Why I like landlines.
February 26th, 2003 at 7:23 pm
Grrr. It’s official. I just printed out the UPS shipping label to return the blasted thing to Amazon.com. I think I’m going to try buying another one at a nearby brick&mortar shop. If that works, I know the first was simply a lemon, and if it doesn’t then it becomes *almost* certain that there’s something VERY peculiar about my operating environment - probably my phones. If that’s the case, I might be hosed… Or I could eat around $250-$300 and replace all my 2.4 GHz phones with the recently-available 5.8 GHz models. Sigh.
February 27th, 2003 at 10:51 am
Yet again, I say unto you:
Last night upon my laying off the head to pillow, I was visited by a strange apparition.
Ephayelim was the name of this being that claimed divine source, and a message from higher beings was I to deliver unto all and sundry. “Yeah” it said “And Dan is an awfully sundry sorta fella”.
And so unto you, do I bear this message from above:
“Stop it. Whaddaya need wi-fi for indoors from room ta room ya edge-walking techno-weenie?? Landlines are more secure, and verily, easy to troubleshoot.”
Thus did the angel speak unto me, in words and sounds most heinous and beautiful.