Successful Troubleshooting!
I just sorted out a very geeky problem I’ve been having, and I’m feeling pretty proud of myself. Prior to coming to Korea, I ordered myself an Asus EeePC 901. For the most part, it’s been a fantastic machine. My one complaint has been the wireless performance. It’s mostly OK at my apartment, but on the go it has a real hard time connecting to access points. If the signal strength is anything less than stellar, it’s just pretty flakey. It may be a linux-related driver issue; I’m not sure.
Regardless, I’d had enough, so I ordered an Intel 4965 AGN card prior to my parents’ visit. The original Ralink card used 2 antennas. The new Intel card had jacks for three. I’m pretty sure that three antennas are required for true 802.11N speed, but I haven’t done a lot of research on it. Something about MIMO (multiple input/multiple output) support. I thought 3 was probably better than 2, so I spent $5 and ordered one. I don’t use N networks now, but I figured I might in the future.
Ideally, I would have disassembled the machine and found a good location to stash the new antenna, but the wire was really short, and I didn’t want tear everything apart. I just stuck it under the (shielded) access panel. I knew this was a piss-poor location, but I figured that I wasn’t using wireless N anyways, so it probably didn’t matter.
I made this update right before going to Thailand. Everything seemed to be working well. The new card connected to networks faster than the stock card, battery life was better, and it seemed to do a better job with weak signals. I didn’t do a lot of testing, however.
I only used wireless a few times in Thailand, but things didn’t go well. The connection was laggy, and Skype had terrible delay or dropped calls. I blamed it lack of bandwidth, but the problems didn’t go away when I got home. Even on my (excellent) Korean connection, I had problems using Skype.
Tonight I tackled the problem. Ping showed terribly inconsistent latencies, and tons of duplicate packets. At first I blamed my crappy router, but my other laptop had no problems. Traceroute didn’t help narrow down the source of the problem.
I pulled the new wireless card and re-inserted the old card. Problem solved. This had me really frustrated, because the Intel card is pretty much brand new. I tried the Intel card again, but without the third antenna. Bingo! Low latencies and no dropped/duplicate packets.
I don’t know enough about the hardware or the wireless N specification to really understand this one, but it appears that the case shielding was messing up the third antenna, which caused the problems. I’ll watch it for a few days, but the problem seems resolved.
I love easy fixes. I suppose the moral is to do things right the first time, but methodical troubleshooting is critical when problems arise.
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