Wifi Question

Dubbin1 said:

Yes but since it will only connect at G speeds then it doesn't really matter to me if its N or G. Plus I got what seems to be a pretty decent router for only $22

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Thats fantastic !!!
did it fix your problems ?

Dubbin1 said:

Don't know until the router gets here on Tues or Weds.

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Im sure it will and you will also enjoy the faster sppeds on your laptop

When you get your router, make sure to put a password on it. At the minimum, use WEP Security Encryption, but if your router supports it, use WPA/2. If you have an open access point and are have network sharing on your computer (which is default) anyone could connect to your network and steal data. Even if you disable network sharing and use WEP, it is very easy to crack. Using my MacBook Pro, I was able to crack my own and a couple of friends WEP keys with an average time of a minute and a half, and the software to do it is fairly easy to get. If you have it, use WPA/2.

Hope everything works out for you... While I highly recommend N based routers for range and to futureproof your home, G should be able to last your for a year or two.

I hate to be a naysayer, but I really doubt that your WiFi router's speed is the issue here... Even 11mb/s is faster than your broadband connection to the Internet, and you're getting good performance with your laptop over the same router, no? Very few of us have more than a 4mb/s or 5mb/s connection to the internet, and even with overhead, 11mb/s can pretty well saturate that link... Use water as an analogy -- even if you upgraded all your garden hoses to fire hoses more water wouldn't come out if your house is still fed by a 1/2" main pipe. Your speed from your laptop to a local server or media-player, etc. will be enhanced, but the connection to the internet is still the choke point for almost all of us. Certainly you should see excellent speed browsing the web over 11mb/s wifi.

It may be that your router and your Droid aren't playing nicely together at one of a variety of levels. There are some wireless network interfaces (especially, but even some wired ones) that just don't work well with some routers/access points, and a new router may actually solve your problem, but maybe not. Without a lot more data about what's happening at the physical and TCP/IP layers it's impossible for us to do more than speculate.

That said, a $22 upgrade to a "G" router seems like a nice investment; I have a "G" router, and really don't feel a need to upgrade to an "N" router. I have wired gigabit ethernet for my server and in my office and for my DVR, the wireless is just for phones and laptops...

oh .... I forgot about wifi analyzer from the market. could be as simple as changing channels .... maybe

gnath9 said:

oh .... I forgot about wifi analyzer from the market. could be as simple as changing channels .... maybe

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That was a great deal of my problem with wifi, there are too many signals nearby since I live in a condominium complex. Wifi Analyzer helped me find there are over a dozen routers which I was colliding with. I found a channel that was least used by the others and soon as I switched the response on my Droid and laptops was remarkable. Now I analyze once a week to see if anyone is moving into my channel space and I move my router off to another channel. It's like a shell game but pays off when you have good connectivity and speed.

I think you made the smart move going to a G router rather than N.
Once I got the OTA 2.2 update on my phone my wifi connection on the phone has been really screwed.
From sifting through "2.2 Froyo bugs" thread I found a few other people that commented on this. It appears that with the update my phone sees the N access is available and tries to lock onto the N service...but the phone won't actually work on N so my wifi works for 5 minutes then doesn't work for 5 minutes and so on, as it flips back and forth from G to then trying to rock the N connection.
Unfortunately I do not control the router where I live so wifi is now toast for me at home and I am 100% 3G for now.

gnath9 said:

oh .... I forgot about wifi analyzer from the market. could be as simple as changing channels .... maybe

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Oops -- I should have thought of that -- I don't know why I didn't. (I'll plead that I'm out in the 'burbs and the nearest house is out of line-of-sight.) Perhaps your laptop and router both have radios that are overcoming channel interference and your Droid can't. Changing channels is an easy first attempt at a fix... Download the WiFi analyzer and look for an open piece of spectrum, and move your router and other devices to that channel.

Although the industry claims that protocols like 802.11g or 802.11n are "standards", every vendor implements the standard differently, and there are times when things just won't work together. (I used to work for a company that sold test gear to the network hardware manufacturers, so I know how ugly it is in the real world). A couple of years ago I tried for days to get a friend's Linksys router to talk to his IBM laptop, a Dell laptop, and another system; one of the laptops just would never connect. As soon as we swapped to a Netgear router, with the exact same security settings, it all worked fine, while the Linksys router worked great for someone else with different endpoints. There are just too many devices and too many permutations for the vendors to do as much testing as we (or they) would like them to do.

It does sound like some kind of problem was introduced somewhere in the 2.2 network stack; hopefully a fix will be sent to us. I'm running 802.11g and I can't say that I have perfect connectivity, either, but neither my WiFi access point or my router (separate boxes) has the ability to capture the data I need to really know what's going on.

Good luck, and let us know what happens.

Dubbin1 said:

I have no idea how to change channels in the router nor have I ever seen an option for that.

edit: I found it and changed it, didn't help.

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Did you use WiFi analyzer to find an clear channel first? Hopefully your new router will play nice with your phone!

[mods -- this is a duplicate; I can't seem to delete, can you? thanks.]

Is the router password protected???

Dubbin1 said:

Must be a problem with my router, I'm at my bro in laws and the wifi is working great.

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That's actually a big step forward -- you know that all the piece parts work, they just won't work together. I bet that there's some difference in the security implementation between your 2010 era phone and a few year old modem. I run open wifi (no security) on my 5 year old 802.11g access point, so I never tried to get my droid to negotiate keys with a router.

Let us know how you make out with the new one.

awesome !!! congrats

gnath9 said:

awesome !!! congrats

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Ditto!