HappyPappy Blog

The Glory

So when I got my Dell laptop a year ago with a Dell TrueMobile 1300 card built in I was so excited it’s not even funny (nothing funny came with “so excited”). With 802.11b and g standards supported I was expecting to connect at 54mbps without wires throughout the house.
I rushed out and bought a Netgear WG602 access point, for some insane reason the access point itself was more expensive than an equivalent router and to this day there is no good explanation.

I brought the access point home, hooked into my network and watched all the lights come up. I followed the instructions and pretty soon was all connected. One thing I noticed is that my PC detected several wireless networks throughout the neighborhood, I quickly proceeded to enable WEP encryption on my wireless network and you should do the same. The direction to do this vary from device to device, but generally entails generating or typing in a key in a management screen on your access point and using a matching key on your PC or laptop.

At first all was well, I could do everything I normally would but without wires….wohoo. Then over time my laptop would start dropping connections for no apparent reason and at other times would either not connect to the network or only manage a measly 1mbps connection. This of course is WITHOUT ANY CHANGES TO MY ENVIRONMENT.

At first I thought that either my Access Point or either my wireless adapter had gone south, but it turns out I’m not the only one.

The Pain

As it turns out other people have experienced similar issues.

The general feeling is that Windows itself is to blame, this Wired Article refers to a feature of Windows called Wireless Zero Configuration.

Luckily I found a solution in the DLink Support Forums that seems to provide a work around for dropped connections and other wireless difficulties.

The above does seem to help, but my opinion overall is that wireless just isn’t worth the investment. You have to invest several hundreds of $$$ (Access Point and/or wireless router and possibly a wireless network card for your PC or laptop) not to mention your time and money to get it to work and in the end you are not guaranteed any results.

Conclusion

A customer of mine recently asked me how to setup a wireless network in his house, I advised him to hire a contractor and have the rooms in his house wired instead.

He is currently very happy with the stability of his network.