Parham.org

Last weekend Amy and I began to notice that our Wi-Fi wireless network was beginning to get flaky. Sometimes we wouldn’t be able to connect with our laptops at all. Other times we would get a horribly slow connection. Still other times we would get an excellent connection only to watch it deteriorate a few minutes later. The problem was spotty and difficult to pin down. And it had shown up suddenly. One day everything was fine, and the next things were barely working at all.

Since the same symptoms were exhibited on both laptops, my first suspicion was our Linksys wireless router. I rebooted it but the problem was still around. I had upgraded the router earlier in the year to 802.11g from an ancient (at least in tech-years) 802.11b unit also from Linksys. That one had been upgraded from an an even more ancient proprietary 5 Mbps Proxim unit. Ah, the joys of early adoption, but that’s another story. I reconfigured the wireless settings to see if something was misbehaving there. No luck. I began to doubt the problem was with the router.

My suspicions turned to wireless interference. Interference in the 2.4 GHz spectrum occupied by the most popular Wi-Fi networks (802.11b/g) can be a fairly common occurrence, and the frequency of interference is increasing as wireless computer networks become more popular. The problem here was that no matter where I placed the laptops in the house the symptoms remained consistently inconsistent. This was true even when the laptops were in the same room as the wireless router. Furthermore, the problem showed up no matter which channel I selected in the 2.4 GHz spectrum, which is fairly unusual. Over the next couple of days I tried several things to try to diagnose the problem. Nothing seemed to make a difference. And nothing was getting better. I was stumped.

Then I remembered an article I had read a few months ago on ZDNet. The article, alarmingly titled “How to jam your neighbor’s Wi-Fi legally,” was about a new breed of wireless networking products that are now on store shelves. These products are usually labeled “Draft N” or “Pre-N” and promise amazing things. Things like 12X the speed and 4X the range of regular 802.11g. Ready for the catch? There are two of them really. First, all of these products have been released ahead of the true IEEE wireless standard called 802.11n (thus all the references to “N”). So none of them are compatible with each other, and there’s no guarantee they’ll be compatible with the standard once it is published sometime next year. So if you buy one now, chances are very good that you’ll have to throw it out and buy something new in order to get compatibility with the standard. But it’s the second catch that’s the doozy. Pay close attention:

According to ZDNet, every “Draft N” or “Pre-N” system completely obliterates any regular Wi-Fi network that happens to be nearby.

That’s right: Obliterates. As in gone. Up in smoke. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

While Airgo’s third generation product achieves record breaking throughput, it annihilates any legacy 802.11 b/g product in the vicinity and effectively shuts them down. The other products from Broadcom and Marvel weren’t quite as devastating to the neighbors, but the damage is still severe. What’s crazy is that these products are FCC legal and are being sold on store shelves today. This is a serious problem in the city where town homes and condominiums are right next to each other and it’s even a problem for businesses which primarily uses 802.11 b/g.

Having remembered the article, I went back and reread it. Then I did more research. The kind of symptoms described by the testers certainly sounded similar to what I was experiencing. Since it seemed that the only thing that survived the onslaught of a Draft N or Pre-N system was ANOTHER Draft N or Pre-N system, I decided to go out, buy one, and see for myself.

Looking into reviews online, the Belkin Pre-N system — while not the newest generation — seemed to have the best mix of reliability, range, and performance. Besides, I figured that since it was a little older it might be a little cheaper, and I wasn’t too fired up about spending the $300 it was going to cost to get into this, especially since I was convinced that I was going to have to spend another $300 once the real 802.11n standard was published. I found a local source for the Belkin, and soon had the whole thing installed and up and running on the network and our laptops.

The results? Crystal clear reception and blazing fast speeds.

I felt a little guilty while I was installing it, imagining that I could hear the cries of despair from my neighbors as their wireless networks collapsed. My neighbors’ networks had shown up tentatively over the years. I’ve enjoyed watching them sprout up. They’d been good neighbors, and since their owners didn’t know to move them off of the usual default wireless channel 6, they’d been easy to avoid. But this was technology survival of the fittest. Some new interloper was laying waste to the landscape, and there was no way I was going to go another day without my wireless connection.

But had there really been an interloper? I’ve had the new “Pre-N” system up and running almost a week now. While the problem I was having last weekend has certainly disappeared, was another new wireless system really to blame or had it been something else? The truth is that over the week I’ve been unable to confirm that my problems were caused by a new Draft or Pre-N system. Was some other freak interference to blame? Was I now the evildoer laying waste to my unsuspecting neighbors?

Well tonight I got my answer. I was working through a configuration problem on the new system — caused by a total lack of Belkin software support for new WPA security that was compounded by conflicts in Microsoft’s own “zero config” wireless subsystem. I was changing some settings on my laptop when I saw it. For a moment after a network scan, another new network popped up with a name beginning with “Belkin_Pre-N_.” It was the telltale sign of the interloper for whom I’d been searching. Another “Pre-N” network. He was out there. Clearly he was on the limits of my reception, but I was picking him up nonetheless, and that would explain why the interference had been so inconsistent. My suspicions had been correct, and I could — at least partially — lay my guilt to rest. But now the neighbors were definitely caught between the two of us, and they were certainly well screwed.

The problem with all this is that we were supposed to protected from this kind of mess by the wireless manufacturers themselves and their membership in the Wi-Fi Alliance. The Wi-Fi Alliance is the industry group that came up with the whole “Wi-Fi” branding in the first place, and it was backed by interoperability and compatibility testing. If your product was screwed up, you didn’t get the “Wi-Fi Certified” logo to put on your box. That and the fact that consumers care about interoperability and compatibility was enough to keep the wireless manufacturers in line. Mostly. But now 80% of the shelves in the stores are taken up by the latest breed of “Draft N” and “Pre-N” products which are neither interoperable nor compatible. What’s worse, the new products are actively destructive. And yet all of them still carry the “Wi-Fi Certified” brand. Now, those in the industry may try to mount the argument that, technically speaking, the certification is only for the fact that these products can also have regular 802.11b/g computers connect to them. That’s true, except only those computers connected to the new products will work, and it sidesteps the elephant in the room: That all other networks will be annihilated.

So much for the alliance. And there goes the neighborhood.