Wireless Signal Power Levels...

[William Kenworthy]

On Wed, 2009-09-09 at 10:16 -0400, John Dowd wrote:
> I've been working with the wifi aspect of the Openmoko trying to setup for a 
> SIP based phone system.
> 
> One problem that I've been having that someone pointed out is that the signal 
> levels may be one problem that I'm running into. When I have a wireless 
> connection and I do a "iwconfig" on the Neo side, the signal level is being 
> shown at -147dBm. Apparently that is very low and the expected working level 
> should be around -90dBm.
> 
> I'm running the AP (Access Point) using hostapd on PC with a USB wireless 
> dongle so I do have access to the AP and settings.
> 
> My question is: is the signal level really a problem and is there a simple 
> configuration setting that I can use to try and fix it?
> 
> Cheers!!

Yes, pick up freerunner and place next to AP.

In plain terms, the freerunner is deaf.  To get a stable wifi signal, it
needs to be close to the AP.  To put it in perspective, my sony vaio
laptop with an intel chipset works at least twice as far from the AP as
the FR does :(

Some improvement at longer distances can be made by using wmiconfig
--power=maxperf eth0 (check syntax), but the downside is it only works
sometimes, sucks power and may cause problems with bluetooth (i.e.,
streaming internet radio over wifi and using a bluetooth headset).

BillK