[TriLUG] linksys wrtg54g range problems

[Pat Regan]

On Sat, 20 Nov 2004, Ralph Blach wrote:

> I have a linksys wrtg54g wireless access point and it seem to have range
> wireless range problems.  Is this normal
> for the linksys wireless access points.  The two cards I have are
> wireless b cards, do  I definately dont need
> G but better range would be nice.
>
> Any sugestions?
>

It probably really depends on what the problem is.  Out of the box my
WRT54G can reach (almost)everywhere in the house at full speed.  This is
in an old home, and the room the router is in has very old plaster walls
(the kind with the thin, tightly spaced, wood slats behind the plaster).

One room in the house is behind a curved plaster wall with a
chicken-wire-type mesh holding the shape of the plaster.  In that room I
get a minimal but steady signal.  Turning up the power on the transmitter
fixed that problem.

If you want to turn up the transmitter power, you will have to upgrade to
an aftermarket firmware.  I am running one of the newer Sveasoft
firmwares.  I can't find the exact page I downloaded from, but this looks
like a good place to start:

http://www.neuromancer.ca/wrt54g/

My rouer claims to be version:

Alchemy-pre5.3 v2.04.4.8sv

I have been running this firmware for 2-3 months on 3 routers with no
issues.

Among the many things you can do with this firmware is turning up the
transmitter power.  I believe stock is 28mw...  The firmware I am running
claims I can turn it up to 251mw, but I believe the ceiling is actually 92
or so.  I have 2 of my routers running 56mw without any problems.  I have
read of other people having heat issues at higher settings, YMMV.

The things that most impressed me about this firmware was the support for
the layer 7 packet filter for QOS, and that you can configure VLANs
(although I don't think you can do much useful with VLANs on a 4 port
switch, the ethernet chip seems to support hardware VLANing).

As someone else mentioned, you should also check if you are overlapping
with someone else's channel.  That really kills performance.  Use either
channel 1, 6, or 11.

Noise from 2.4ghz chordless phones and whatnot hurts...  My 3 routers are
in very noise free environments, and I get 500-600k/sec average throughput
over FTP.  In my old apartment complex I was lucky to break 250k/sec on
any channel.  There were 3 access points within range of me, none of which
were on an overlapping channel with me.

Placement of your hardware helps quite a bit, too.  Going straight through
a wall is much better than trying to go through at a steep angle...  Every
wall you hit will soak off a bit of signal...

How much range are you getting?  And how many walls are you going through?

Pat