Lucent/Orinoco Connection Troubles...

[J English Smith]

For those who are online with PB 1400s via a Lucent Silver or Gold card, a question...

My home connectivity is fine. Work connection, using the guest wi-fi in our organization, is very odd. I can get an initial connection but then it drops with only a minute or two of inactivity. The signal strength bar is only about 1/3 in the Orinoco control panel; it is about 2/3 at home for our wi-fi there. I can force a reconnection by going into the Orinoco control panel again and reconnecting to the "work" network but again, it will only connect for a short while.

I can't tell if the signal strength is the problem or if the problem is that IE5 is just "choking" on the bandwidth for the site I normally access (BBC's low bandwidth site - they recently addred more graphics in, grrrrrr).

Has anyone else experienced frequent connection drops if the signal strength bar is at 1/3rd or lower? I'm just puzzling over what is really causing this, and whether there's a workaround.

J

 

[Strimkind]

I've had similar problems. What you have to do is set your router to 'Long Preamble' rather than Short which is default on most. It should fix the disconnections.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Has your work's guest WiFi been set to disallow 802.11b? It could be that it is doing the handshake, which may be enough to convince the WaveLAN control panel that you're connected, but not passing any traffic because the router is configured to block.

I often get wonky "maybe connections" when using my WaveLAN card on some 802.11n-native networks.

 

[J English Smith]

That's a good idea, AF. I will check on that. Since we are a hospital, I am guessing that we have the b protocol as well as n in the guest network. But you never know until you ask.

I did manage to successfully connect at lunchtime, running the WannaBe browser for 10-15 minutes down in the cafeteria. So maybe it is indeed a signal strength issue, just where my office is in the campus.

 

[jwmcfarlin]

Well, it works...I followed the instructions on the penmachine site (which was pretty handy since I have a

Lucent WaveLan Gold card. The hardest thing was setting up a MAC address access point instead of

the normal sort of automated setup. Then, like an idiot, I munged a B into an 8 on my wife's

computer's MAC so I spent some time wondering if it was her computer before I figured it out...all

manner of hassles exist for the amateur IT dude.

So, anyway, 68KMLA shows up pretty screwy in IE 4.01 (intending to change it). But it works, and that's

what counts, right?

Best,

John