[Ti] signal strength discrepancy

Erik Gaderlund gaderson at mac.com
Wed Mar 19 12:50:54 PST 2003


Now that were talking about airport/WiFi, I wonder if anyone has any 
ideas of what's been happeing with my parent's iMac.  They have a 
Proxim wireless/router hooked up to their RCA cable modem, and within 
the last couple of months the iMac can't get a constant signal (the 
router is not more than 1-2 feet from the iMac.  Watching the signal 
strength in the Airport app in 9.2.2--it jumps from high to nothing, 
assigning and re-assigning IP addresses.  We now have it hooked up by 
ethernet to the router so things are working fine.  I pulled and 
reseated/reattached the airport card and antenna, but, the signal 
still bounces.  When an iBook or TiBook is brought in they have no 
problems getting a signal and connecting to the network.  I did some 
searches on many sites and couldn't find anything.

erik g


At 10:24 -0600 03/19/03, Kynan Shook wrote:
>luke <etyrnal at ameritech.net> writes:
>>why is it that the internet connect menu think that i have a strong
>>signal (~ 80%) and MacStumbler & iStumbler both think my signal is only
>>30??
>>which one is right??
>
>MacStumbler is reading the strength value reported by the card; 
>AFAIK, there are no units, and no minimum/maximum on the scale. 
>It's just a number, and is only useful for comparing one network to 
>another.  30 does not mean 30%.
>The AirPort menu (at least in OS X) I believe shows you fairly 
>accurately what speed your wireless connection is running at; to 
>increase the maximum distance, your speed drops as you get further 
>away.  4 bars=11 Mbps, 3 bars=5.5 Mbps, 2 bars=2 Mbps, 1 bar=1Mbps. 
>If you're always at 4 (or 3) bars, you can sacrifice range to 
>(possibly) get slightly better speeds by changing the multicast rate 
>to 11 (or 5.5) Mbps.  If you want a little more range, you can drop 
>the multicast rate to 1 Mbps, but your wireless network will 
>probably run slower.
>HTH,
>
>
>Kynan Shook
>kshook at mac.com
>http://homepage.mac.com/kshook/index.html
>
>
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