Yes, I think the root cause is possibly poor wifi performance of the TP Link.
Have now installed DD-WRT firmware. Naturally that in itself hasn't made any significant difference but it is perhaps giving me a slightly better picture of what's going on, which appears to be relatively poor signal quality anything more than a little distance from the device.
Now got the router operating dual-band as before but connecting via 2.4Ghz (as signal strength/linkspeed is worse using 5Ghz). Router 2.4Ghz band is operating on channel 13, using N/G mixed mode, and DD-WRTs hybrid 20/40Mhz setting.
Around me (according to inSSIDer) I have one other continuously visible network on channel 1, and another two that come and go on channel 1 and 9. inSSIDer suggests I'm getting signal strength about -50 to -60. Wifi Analyzer on my android phone says something more like -70 to -80.
DD-WRT reckons it can see my laptop at anyhing from about -45 to -65, against a noise level of -95.
(Obviously too I;ve done something unintended when setting up DD-WRT as neither inSSIDer nor Windows wifi connection ever show a data connection about 54Mbps now)
I saw a photo of some Polish guy's teardown of the antenna - most of it is hollow plastic, the actual antennae are approx 4cm high inside black plastic tube. Not terribly surprised here.
Hi, this is a very non-technical reply, but we were advised to move our router so there was not the Hot Water Cylinder between it and our laptops, this did improve things a lot. Cheers, Nancy
Hi, this is a very non-technical reply, but we were advised to move our router so there was not the Hot Water Cylinder between it and our laptops, this did improve things a lot. Cheers, Nancy
Yup - wireless routers should (ideally) be away from metal in general, but the tank of water would have been absorbing some of the RF too. Best on some sort of countertop, or wall mounted (as long as the wall isn't solid/concrete etc!).
Ha! I love plain English replies. Unforntunately the water tank is in the roof.
Thought I might have solved it last night, twiddling the power settings on the Samsung 9 laptop to force it to keep maximum power for the wireless card even when not plugged in. That seemed to make a litte difference.
But this morning looks like back to the same old thing. Router can barely display its own Web interface; pings over 50ms to timeout; speedtest upload fails. Groan.
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