Wireless network performance

[JackKane]

I have a D-link 713p wireless router/firewall with 3-port switch. On the wireless side of things, I am using a Dell Truemobile 1150 (Orinoco Gold equivalent), but I used a D-Link DWL-650 before. With both cards, tranfer speeds between a wired PC and a wireless laptop are about 200KBytes/sec. I tried this with and without WEP encryption, but there was no noticeable difference.

I am running Win98SE on the wired PC and WinXP PRO on the laptop. I tested by copying files through network neighborhood. XP says that the link speed is 11Mbps, and the signal strenght is Excellent - make sense, since I kept it 3 feet away from the router.

Anybody had similar experiences with wireless?
Any suggestions on improving performance?

Thanks

[kwebb]

Equipment. Latest firmware on the router. Latest firmware and drivers on the client cards. You should see somewhere in the neighborhood of 500-600K on an FTP transfer or something like that. Chance you have some interference I suppose. Change the default channel on the router. Usually default is 6, 2.437. Try one of the non-overlapping channels. 1 is 2.412, or 11 is 2.462. Make sure if you have detachable antennas they are tight. Does your software utility have signal quality? More important than strength. Hard to say what yours should be because the software could be different. Should be in the 70-80% range I would expect if you do have a signal quality meter. Hell 100% if your 3 feet away.

[BlueFlame]

http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/448

Thats a fairly good connection speed for your HW there. It's funny you might notice higher and lower speeds with your air pressure, balmy days it seems slower to me, using same setup.

[kwebb]

200 KB is not good. At all with the AP and client cards 3 feet apart.

[JackKane]

Equipment. Latest firmware on the router. Latest firmware and drivers on the client cards.

Check on all of the above. Although, it is hard to tell what the firmware on the card is since it is dell-branded and is detected as such; Orinoco's software had trouble picking it up.

Tried a different channel - no difference. Signal Quality - tough question. There's an SNR monitor, that is showing a mediocre quality, no percentages though.

Did the following: Placed the laptop about 10 inches away from the AP - quality reported as excellent (so is strength - duh). File transfer rate is the same as from about 3 feet away, where quality is mediocre. Go figure.

Anyone has experience with this particular AP?

Thanx for suggestions, btw!