[lug] OT: Avaya Card Performance -- Was: cheap 802.11b for linux...

[Archer Sully]

On Thursday 21 March 2002 10:02 am, Nate Duehr wrote:
> Archer Sully wrote:
> >On Thursday 21 March 2002 01:21 am, rise wrote:
> >>I suspect their range isn't going to be as good as an Orinoco or Symbol
> >>card and they lack the external antenna connector.
> >
> >My Avaya has absolutely terrible sensitivity w/out an external antenna. 
> > I'm lucky to get a signal strength of 40 when I'm sitting just a couple
> > feet from an AP.
>
> When you say "signal strength of 40" what do you mean?  Is that a
> percentage or is that the linux 40/92 thing from iwconfig?
>

Link quality, which is appears to be an averaged S/N.  I'm showing 38db
right now (signal -42db, noise -86db).    Oddly, if put the laptop on the
floor, the signal gets significantly better.  At Caffe Sole, though, I've 
sat next to another user, and while his S/N was regularly 85+db, mine was
still mired at <40db.    Same AP in both cases.

Now admittedly, this card has seen better days.  It got severly bent some
how (badly enough to no longer fit into the slot ;-), and may have had its
antenna damaged.  It did take a bit of work to get it bent back into shape.

> If you have the Windows client, go into the advanced stuff and look at
> the Signal to Noise ratio.  

Wavemon does all this (and more), and with a proper curses interface in a 
text window instead of a useless GUI ;-).

-- archer