Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler OT: Wireless internet?

I have the D-Link Xtreme G gear. The router is near my desktop machine and cable modem, in the basement at one end of my house. I run a short network cable from the router to my desktop, so I didn't bother adding a wireless card to my desktop. My son and his laptop are upstairs at the opposite end of the house. He had trouble getting a signal in his bedroom, so I bought a D-Link wireless repeater that is upstairs, nearly directly above the router, and that solved the problem.

For each of the three components, I had to call D-Link tech support to get them working correctly at the top speed. I think two or maybe all three of them required firmware downloads. I did get through to tech support fairly quickly, and they did a good job of walking me through the process. The system has been working well for months now, with no crashes.

I haven't encountered this problem. I've often sucessfully been on the 2.4 GHz phone and the wireless network. Maybe channel 6 isn't vulnerable? Maybe my 2.4 GHz phone is a piece of crap? (Oh wait, that's not maybe. Let this be a lesson to you folks... if a product is selling for half the price of its competitors with similar specs, it's probably a hunk of junk...Axioms excepted.)

well this does bring up an interesting question. At home, I own a Panny 2.4Ghz cordless phone. We also own a Windows XP based PC (currently connected to the net via DSL). My gf just got a Mac laptop through work and we are looking for a way to set up a wireless network to incorporate the laptop. Is there any way to do this without potentially causing problems with the phone?

thx in advance everyone

Pray. I haven't had a single problem with the phone and the wireless network, no matter which router I was using. (famous last words... Yeah, I'm superstitious. Do computer maintenance/repair, and you will be too...) I'd say give it a shot, maybe try different channels on the wireless.

Now that I've thought about it a bit, this may only happen with the "secure" 2.4 GHz phones which, I think, scan through various channels while in use in order to avoid being picked up by a scanner. I could see those popping onto the wireless frequency and totally hosing things. The answer may, in fact, be a cheapass phone!

i think i'll do as you advised and pray! Actually it's a fairly expensive phone and I seem to think it does alternate channels. Hopefully in it's multitude of features there is an option to stick to one channel. I'll check it out tonight when i get home. Thanks for the tip Ken.

Well, the phone I've experienced the problem with is a VTech 2468 (2.4 GHz) cordless. It doesn't always kill the network either. Most of the time in fact there's no problem at all, but it does mess things up from time to time. A quick reboot of the router and everything is running fine. More of a hassle than anything else. I would chalk it up to a buggy router except that the physical connections running through it have never dropped, even when the wireless goes down. The router BTW is a Linksys BEFW11S4 (802.11b).

Bizarre. I'm too lazy to get up right now, but I've got a VTech 2.4GHz phone, too, and obviously a similar-ish router. Well, who knows...

If you didn't get a card yet, Proxim/Orinoco are generally considered the best range wise. I wouldn't recommend their access points, but the cards are great.

I agree with Ken. I have many friends who have DLink and get dropped all the time. QC is bad. I have great luck also with Linksys and MSI RG54GS routers. MSI cards, cardbus's are also much cheaper than competition. I have sold 10 MSI routers with built-in print server to people and all are happy except one that had a issue with one of the Dell All in One printer's software.

Ah, it's nice to know I'm not insane...