Wireless Problem

[mikeywikey]

I was at my daughter's house at the weekend, so took my Acer Aspire 3000 laptop. I was only able to pick up one (secured) wireless network - not the one that my daughter has on her router. She was able to pick up 4 networks, including her own. Why was I not able to pick up her router nor the others that she was picking up?

[Tony D]

If the router SSID is not broadcast, you probably won't see it. So check that first.

[mikeywikey]

?

 

Hi Kelly,

I don't quite understand what you mean!!

My daughter and I were sat together with our laptops, we both clicked on View Available Networks - hers showed the 4 mine only showed the 1.

[Tony D]

I have to check, but I think if the networks did at one time broadcast their SSID's then you daughter's computer may have already learned about them. So even if the SSID was not broadcast, your daughter's machine would see the network, but yours wouldn't. Again, I'll have to run an experiment to verify this.

 

Maybe the radio receiver in your laptop is not as sensitive as your daughter's wireless. However, that wouldn't explain why you couldn't see your daughter's network which I assume was close by. How much signal strength did the networks have as shown on your daughter's machine?

[mikeywikey]

Thank you for that Kelly.

Of the 4 networks my daughter was seeing - her's of course was 'excellent' signal strength as the router was only upstairs. As far as I remember the other 3 (including the one I was seeing) came up as good or very good.

[Dalo Harkin]

there are three types of wireless B, G and Draft N

Draft N is the highest signal strength - and if her router and computer use Draft N and you are using B or G it is possible that you would not see it at all as you would need draft N to see Draft N if you know what I mean - it would make sense too as hers would scan and find more than yours would

[Poconos]

To clarify what Kelly said above about seeing access points that don't broadcast the SSID. Seems to be a function of the wireless software whether a non-broadcast AP is shown. My Lenovo laptop will display them as 'unknown' but a Linksys PCI card in my desktop doesn't display at all and I've seen that on a Netgear PCMCIA card as well. There seems to be no standard rule. However once the machine connects to an AP then the SSID is shown whether it is broadcast or not. I also notice on the Lenovo that APs with marginal signal strength may or may not be shown and this is inconsistant too.

Al

[mikeywikey]

Thanks all for your help.

Assuming my laptop does not have Draft N ... is there any way that I could get it or install it?

[mikeywikey]

I should add that although my Acer Aspire 3000 is 'wireless' it does appear to have a slot for a wireless card. Is this what I should obtain?

[Dalo Harkin]

you can buy a draft N wireless card or USB dongle BUT - there is no point unless you have a draft N router, and even then:-

 

Note a Draft N router is more for distance - it will not be faster,

it supports a faster speed but seeing as though only Tokyo has 100Mb internet :eek:

and 50Mb is not due until next year from Virgin there is no point.

[Tony D]

To add to what Dalo mentioned: where you will see a speed increase is not with Internet access, but with access to devices on your network. So if you're transferring large files between computers or from a comptuer to something like Apple TV - that's where you'll see the speed increase.