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[Supermercado]

So I've got two D-Link PCI wireless cards in two different desktops in addition to the Broadcom in my laptop. All three are connected to my Netgear router. The Broadcom cards gets a constant 54Mbps, while the two D-Links struggle to get to 11Mbps. The 802.11g D-Link card across the house has more than 50% signal strength and link quality and has a hard time even keeping 5.5Mbps. And the 802.11b that's in the room next to mine is even worse. It has trouble getting to 2Mbps. How is that even possible? The card across the house should get 24-36Mbps easy with a little more than half signal strength and there's absolutely no reason at all for the one next door to not get a full 11 constantly. What gives?

[Catfish]

We've talked a ton and the only thing I can come up with is issues with dual mode b/g and something in your walls (or other interference).  You've heard about all you care to from me (and about all that'll help, hehe), so I'll just let this one go

[Supermercado]

Yeah, I'm really stumped on this one now. I switched the channel on the network from 11 to 6 and that made a huge difference on the 11g card, but no channel changes made a bit of difference on the 11b. I asked my dad and the only thing in the walls is wood, drywall, and insulation. And maybe a negligible bit of wiring.

Another possible source that I think we ruled out was the desk itself. There's a large metal strip that helps to support the weight of the monitor and it's not far from where the antenna goes. We tried moving the antenna around so that it's further from the metal piece and we can get ~80% signal strength and ~65% link quality, but it still drops from 11Mbps to 1 and stays there. No reason at all.

I'm about to give up on this and just tell my dad to run some cat5 and be done with it. Heck, do it nice while you're at it. Instead of having a cat5 cable just coming out of a hole in the wall in my room like it is now, install a jack. Then drill another hole through the wall to my sister's room and put jacks on both sides. Bam. All you gotta do then is run 15' around the side of her room. And if that doesn't work, then there's something wrong with the computer itself.

[Catfish]

Well, high strength and moderate quality means you're receiving a strong signal, but with some decent distortion.  Many bit errors or packet retransmissions from that and enough of those result in the connection being throttled downward.  That can come from lots of things, usually interference (stupid 2.4 GHz band).  The 11->6 modification supports that idea.

And rgr that @ cat-5 jacks... planning on doing that one day when I get a house

[Supermercado]

What I don't get is that when my dad moved the whole tower away from the desk to eliminate the desk as being a possible source of noise, it made no difference. The only thing we've got anymore is the fact that we're running a b/g network, but even that's a sketchy theory since when the b card was in the server across the house, it never had problems like we're having now (as far as I know, anyway) and even then, I had my laptop running 11g the whole time.

If we were to try going to just b, all that I'd need to do is throttle the router itself to b rather than b/g, right? And the two g cards will automatically detect that and connect at the highest speed they can?

[Catfish]

Yes, but you should just buy a g for the server   54 > 11, hehe

[Supermercado]

The server actually is already on g. I replaced the b card with the g card my dad bought the other day. The b card is what's now giving us problems in my dad's old computer that's in my sister's room (dunno how well you remember my house, but the door right across the hall from mine is hers). He said last night that he's thinking of just buying another g card and being done with it. The b card was only $10 after rebates, anyway And if we do that, then we'll have a matching pair of b router and b card, so it's not all bad.

[Catfish]

Possible solution   And I remember your house, hehe