diagnosing flaky wifi ... good software tool?

[mc510]

I've got a really flaky 802.11g connection between my laptop (Vista w/ Broadcom wifi chip) and my router (Trendnet 432BRP), which usually becomes evident by painfully slow internet speeds. Restarting the router usually gets me back to full speed for a while, but I'm back to 200kbps by the next day. I know it's not a DSL problem because my computer that's connected to the router by ethernet always maintains good internet speed. I guess it's most likely either a problem with the router or it's 2.4ghz interference, right? So (here's the question, finally) how does 2.4ghz interference show up? I'm assuming that it results in packet loss, resend requests, etc., and it seems like the wifi chip should report those errors to Windows. Is there something in Windows that would show me those errors, or is there a (free) utility that does this? thanks!

[nitroshift]

First off, welcome to THE forums! For tracing problems with your connection you can run the ping command from your laptop against your router and see if there are any packet losses. The syntax is: ping router_IP -t. Good luck!

[DigeratiPrime]

I recommend inSSIDer (free)

http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider

Check if other access points overlap yours.

Check if the Signal Strength is low, a dBm closer to 0 is better.

Watch if the signal is dropping or switching speeds.

[cluberti]

Netstumbler is a good tool for this as well.

[mc510]

cool, thanks guys. did the ping test and it seemed okay (3ms) but it was losing maybe every 20th packet. got inSSIDer going (can't use netstumbler on Vista, unfortunately) and found i was sharing channel 6 with 4 other networks. i'm now alone on channel 11 but haven't been online enough lately to tell if this is a full solution. What does RSSI mean in inSSIDER; is it directly related to signal strength or is it reporting something different?

Edited May 18, 2009 by mc510

[cluberti]

cool, thanks guys. did the ping test and it seemed okay (3ms) but it was losing maybe every 20th packet. got inSSIDer going (can't use netstumbler on Vista, unfortunately) and found i was sharing channel 6 with 4 other networks. i'm now alone on channel 11 but haven't been online enough lately to tell if this is a full solution. What does RSSI mean in inSSIDER; is it directly related to signal strength or is it reporting something different?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Sign...ngth_Indication