Well, the network at Qiming doesn’t seem to work that well, we have a low end all Linksys system with two access points and a LAN router, so how to diagnose it. “Tech-faq.com”:http://www.tech-faq.com/wi-fi-software-tools.shtml has a very good list of tools and at the top is my old favorite “Netstumbler”:http://www.stumbler.net/ this tool only works with Prism cards, but fortunately, the Intel chipset in my VAIO is compatible. So now I can look at the Signal to noise ratio and see what channels the APs are on.
With wireless, you have to be careful about channels because you don’t want things to interfere. In fact over here, we had a 2.4GHz phone right next to the router, you never want to do that as it will interfere with the signal. As “About.com”:http://compnetworking.about.com/od/wifihomenetworking/qt/wifichannel.htm says, the so called 11 channels are actually overlapping, so if you have any choice, the default is typicall channel 6 (the middle channel), so if you have two access points, use channel 1 and 11 (these are the only ones that don’t overlap). Here is the scheme:
Only 1, use channel 6, the default
If you have two, then use channels 1 and 11 to maximize the difference
If you have three, then use channels 1, 6 and 11 and try to keep the 1 and 11 APs far apart.
