WiFi: why not a diagram showing access points?

[Timothy Murphy]

Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:

>> > I'm having terrible problems with my modem/router at the moment.
>> > The WiFi connection on my Thinkpad laptop drops every 10 minutes or so.
>> > I have to restart the network service to get the connection back.
>> 
>> Everything you've written tells me that this isn't a Fedora problem or
>> even a problem with your laptop.
> 
> I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that it's a password problem,
> especially as Timothy didn't say it was. A marginal Wifi signal can
> cause connections to drop. I recently has a similar situation and fixed
> it (touch wood) by fiddling with the signal settings in the router, e.g.
> changing the channel to avoid interference with a cordless phone, using
> 802.11g instead of 802.11n etc. There's a lot of black magic associated
> with Wifi.

Indeed, the two issues (modem password and dropped connections)
are completely unrelated, and I shouldn't have mentioned them together.

Unfortunately the modem/router supplied by my ISP (Telecom Italia)
has absolutely no options for the user
(I can't even change the encryption key),
or if there are any they are in the Smart Card 
one has to insert in the modem.

But the WiFi interface seems more touchy than the Ethernet interface.
If the ethernet connection goes down the so does WiFi,
and I have to turn the modem off and on again.
But the WiFi connection drops much more often, every 10 minutes or so,
and I can usually re-start it by re-starting NetworkManager.





-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland