[TriLUG] wifi woes

[Cristobal Palmer]

I set my brother up with a desktop in my parents' basement about a
week ago, and since the fam already had an apple airport base station
(802.11b), I got an atheros-based PCI nic (802.11a/b/g) and installed
the madwifi driver. Before you read on, I know, I (sigh) know the
madwifi driver is in beta, is noisy, etc.

When I set it up in the basement, I fiddled for a bit to find a decent
spot, finally settling for 68% signal strength. I stuck the little
gnome network status monitor in his panel and taught him how to bring
the interface down, play with modules, bring it back up, etc, etc.

The problem, he tells me, is that he loses the connection
sporadically, sometimes only for five seconds, but sometimes for
minutes on end (even after bringing the interface down and back up),
which is really inconvenient when he's trying to turn in an assignment
on the web or print to the network computer before bed.

As I've typed this, I've lost the connection twice, each time for less
than ten seconds. It's come back before I could even get to a command
prompt to check something.

So the real questions:

0) If I'm sitting here and the connection is just GONE, what should I
be checking to diagnose this?
1) Would a $20 antenna that's stronger than the 2.5 duck the card came
with help?
2) Is there something that I can fiddle with in the driver that will
help? (The HAL won't let me push the signal, but...)
3) Should I just throw up my hands and tell my parents they need to
move the base station?
4) And be honest with me here guys... do I look fat in these pants?

-- 

Cristobal M. Palmer
UNC-CH SILS Student
cristobalpalmer at gmail.com
cmpalmer at ils.unc.edu
ils.unc.edu/~cmpalmer
"Television-free since 2003"