[TriLUG] WiFi quality monitoring

[Joseph Mack NA3T]

On Fri, 15 Aug 2014, Igor Partola wrote:

> Looks like today my issues are, at least with regard to sporadic ping time 
> increases (snipped below signature) and slower than normal Wi-Fi speed (down 
> to 20 Mbps).

ie no change.

> Looks like the OpenWRT ticket #11896 basically says that if you set your Tx
> power outside the range that the hardware supports, it will simply use the
> nearest supported value.

that's how I interpreted it. I didn't know about this.

> Here's the really curious thing that I just thought of: the slow pings, low
> bandwidth, etc. all seem to happen on both the 2.4 GHz radio and the 5 GHz
> bands. Does this mean that external RF interference is unlikely to be an
> issue?

I don't know how dual band machines work. Presumably there are two rf front 
ends. If one overloads, the other is likely to too.

I would expect with you being out in the boonies, it's unlikely that intermod is 
the problem. I assume you can reproduce the problem just with the wap on the 
table and your laptop. You can eliminate intermod by taking the test setup 
somewhere else and see if it clears up and then returns at home.

> 64 bytes from 172.20.20.1: icmp_seq=107 ttl=64 time=0.825 ms
> 64 bytes from 172.20.20.1: icmp_seq=108 ttl=64 time=3.539 ms
.
.
> 64 bytes from 172.20.20.1: icmp_seq=111 ttl=64 time=0.804 ms
> 64 bytes from 172.20.20.1: icmp_seq=112 ttl=64 time=73.802 ms

this is crazy. If it were a cable with solid conductors (rather than 
multistranded), I would expect it wouldn't hop around so fast.

It's got to be a problem that has a time constant of 1 sec or less. It's 
unlikely to be anything mechanical.

I'd try taking the box somewhere else first.

Joe

-- 
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant map
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