[LUGSB] How to fix wireless reliability problems on campus

[Tony Biondo]

What exactly do these settings do?

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 9:37 AM, Richard Yao <ryao at cs.stonybrook.edu> wrote:
> Dear Everyone:
>
> For reference purposes, here is a speed test of WolfieNet-Secure after
> doing this:
>
> http://www.speedtest.net/result/1482432493.png
>
> I could not connect to WolfieNet-Secure from my current location
> before I did that tweak, so you can consider any test done prior to my
> tweak to have 0 bandwidth both ways with infinite ping times. For the
> record, my wireless card is an Intel Ultimate-N 6300, so your speeds
> will likely be somewhat slower with wireless G.
>
> Yours truly,
> Richard Yao
>
> On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 9:17 AM, Richard Yao <ryao at cs.stonybrook.edu> wrote:
>> Dear Everyone,
>>
>> If you have problems connecting to Wi-Fi on campus, try the following:
>>
>> iwconfig wlan0 rts 2347 frag 2346
>>
>> You will want to change the name from wlan0 to whatever your wireless
>> card's name is. You might also want to put it in /etc/local or
>> whatever your distribution's init system stores custom boot commands.
>> It will not fix wireless deadzones like Javits 111, but it should
>> enable you to connect to the campus wireless anywhere anyone else can
>> connect. As an added bonus, your download/upload speeds will be higher
>> too.
>>
>> I had been having issues with wireless reliability on campus since I
>> started using Linux and this semester, the improvements that were made
>> to campus Wi-Fi made it particularly acute. Configuring these settings
>> fixed it for me. Now Network Manager behaves comparably to the Windows
>> Wireless Zero Configuration. It seems that these settings were meant
>> to deal with this exact situation and that Windows has them enabled by
>> default. I assume Mac OS X also had them enabled by default given just
>> how bad things are on campus without them.
>>
>> Let me know if it works for you. If all goes well, I will post to the
>> kernel mailing list in a week or two informing them of the situation
>> so we can get these settings set by default, like on Windows. i.e. You
>> are all guinea pigs.
>>
>> Yours truly,
>> Richard Yao
>>
> _______________________________________________
> lugsb mailing list
> lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu
> To unsubscribe from this list, go to:
> http://www.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu/mailman/listinfo/lugsb
>