Display Occasionally Hangs with WIFI

[Mark Phillips]

A quick follow up:

I have also noticed some variability in the signal strength of the wireless 
network. It moves around from between 33% and 20% signal strength. I am not 
sure what the effect is of changing network speeds on the hardware or the 
software. This observation also seems to correlate with the variability in 
ping response time over the wireless network:

ping to access point over wired network (100baseT):
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.704/0.785/1.093/0.105 ms

ping to Pentium PC over wired network 
(100baseT to access point, wireless-g network to Pentium PC)
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1.126/2.092/49.162/5.396 ms

Beyond running a wire to the Pentium PC, any suggestions on what I can do to 
stop the display, and occasionally, the computer, from hanging? Or, how to 
further isolate the problem?

Thanks!

Mark

On Monday 09 October 2006 06:05 pm, Dazed_75 wrote:
> No idea whether it relates to your problem or not, but I find my wifi signal
> strength seems to vary a lot for at least some clients.  My TiVo unit (20-25
> feet from the Linksys WRT54g) connects using a Netgear WG111 802.11g usb
> adapter and the Tivo reports signal strength varying widely over time.  When
> the strength shows low, transfer rates seem to go to hell probably due to
> errors.  OTOH, my Toshoba laptop with built-in wifi shows slightly varying,
> but consistently high, signal strength even form the other end of the house
> which is through two walls.
> 
> Point is the variance in signal strength can also be the receiver and can
> definitely cause bad slowdowns or lags.
> 
> On 10/9/06, Mark Phillips <mark at phillipsmarketing.biz> wrote:
> >
> > I have ndiswrapper 1.16 installed on an old Pentium laptop running Debian
> > sarge (2.6.8-2-386). The wireless card is a DLink DWL-G630 using the
> > mrv8ka51
> > driver. My access point is a Linksys WRT54G.
> >
> > The pentium box is setup as a remote X-terminal over ssh - i.e. a minimal
> > installation of Debian and X. It makes a great remote terminal for my kids
> > for homework. (see Sterminal - a nifty script -
> > http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/stirling/computergeek/xterminal.html)
> >
> > Most of the time this setup works just fine. However, occasionally, the
> > display hangs and doesn't come back for a couple of minutes, or never. The
> > computer is not dead - I can usually ssh from another computer. However,
> > the
> > X-terminal session is frozen.
> >
> > I have also noticed that if I run a ping from this computer over my local
> > network, I get on average a 1 ms response. But occasionally, the time
> > jumps
> > to 30 or 50 ms.
> >
> > How can I go about finding the cause of this in-frequent hanging? I don't
> > know
> > if it is a ndiswrapper issue, card issue, slow Pentium issue, driver
> > issue,
> > access point issue, phase of the moon, etc.
> >
> > I thought about upgrading to the latest ndiswrapper, but it has to be
> > compiled
> > with gcc >3.4 and my kernel was compiled with gcc3.3. I tried recompiling
> > my
> > kernel with gcc3.4, but it failed to boot up. Probably a configuration
> > issue,
> > even though I used the config file that came with my Debian kernel
> > 2.6.8-2-386. Instead of fixing this problem only to find that the screen
> > hanging is not an ndiswrapper problem, I thought I would go back to the
> > actual problem I want to solve and see if there is another way to
> > troubleshoot it.
> >
> > Thanks!
> > --
> > Mark Phillips
> > Phillips Marketing, Inc
> > mark at phillipsmarketing.biz
> > 602 524-0376
> > 480 945-9197 fax
> > ---------------------------------------------------
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter
> and those who matter don't mind.  - Dr. Seuss
> 

-- 
Mark Phillips
Phillips Marketing, Inc
mark at phillipsmarketing.biz
602 524-0376
480 945-9197 fax