Help (FAQ) web page or link

Solution: with the card installed, open network connections, click on the wireless network connection, click on the advanced tab, click on the wireless networks tab. There will be a box with "use windows to configure my wireless network settings. Uncheck this box. (you don't have to be logged on as an administrator).

Even though the PDF literature and EnGenius data sheets say the cards support Windows 95, they DO NOT. We've had several problems with Windows 95 drivers, so we do not recommend using our products with the Windows 95 operating system. We have also had some problems with Windows 98 machines.

Remember these operating systems were invented before wireless or broadband communication was available. If you are running a system with Windows 95 or 98 and attempting to connect to the Internet using wireless, DSL, or Cable: good luck. Your DSL or Cable provider probably doesn't officially support these operating systems and you shouldn't expect devices like wireless LAN cards, many USB devices, cable and DSL modems, etc. to work out of the box with your computer.

I would like to take this moment to thank SBC for the particularly hard lesson regarding Win95, Win98 and NT systems while working on their self-install CD. I would also like to say Mahalo to Austin Ventures for collapsing BroadJump into Motive, taking them public and stripping the value out.

Check whether the computer has a Plug and Play BIOS.

Windows 98/ME/2000/XP might not detect the PC Card if a previous installation of the PC Card was cancelled before it was finished. Remove the previous driver, and redo the installation again.

A resource conflict could exist.

For Windows 98/ME/2000, use the Device Manager to resolve resource conflicts.

Select System from the Control Panel, then click on the Device Manager tab.

The PC Card is not powered on. The cause may be:

• No Driver loaded or installed.
• Card – Driver mismatch which prevented the driver from loading.
• Device conflict which prevented the driver from loading.
• You are caught in a timewarp and are about to be abducted by space aliens.

• Verify that a driver has been installed.
• Determine if there is a conflict with another device.
• Drink some tequila. Try again.

For Windows 95/98/ME/2000, use the Computer properties to identify the used I/O port addresses and IRQ values.

If there is a device conflict, select alternative settings for I/O Base Address or IRQ values. If you know which device is conflicting with the PC Card, you have the option of changing that device\’s I/O address or IRQ instead of changing the PC Card.

Keep the area around the antenna clear from materials that could block radio transmission, such as metal objects, electronic devices, and cordless telephones.

If your signal is weak, change the direction of the antenna slightly. If necessary, move your notebook computer a few inches to find a better signal.

Use the Link Quality and Signal Strength display in the Client Utility to determine the best location and orientation for a network connection.

LINUX / BSD

Intersil cards (2511):

If your OS supports the "wi" driver, then our 802.11b Senao / EnGenius cards will work. The card ID for the 2511 series is "intersil" Try:

wi driver (ifconfig wi0 ssid foo channel 6 mediaopt hostap up).

Atheros cards (3054, 5004, 5354, 8602):

With madwifi-old (not madwifi-ng) and before, you have to edit / driverdir /hal/ah.h and recompile.

There you will find the following code snippet:

enum {
CTRY_DEBUG = 0x1ff, /* debug country code */
CTRY_DEFAULT = 0 /* default country code */
};

APPLE / MacOS

MINI PCI CARDS
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Now to answer the real question: There are lots of factors. It is difficult to predict what will happen with a particular card in a particular laptop because there is no control over several things:

1. Length/location of the antenna leads attached inside the laptop
2. size of the opening inside the case (there are two sizes of miniPCI cards)
3. spurious emissions inside the laptop that can affect the wireless card performance (or even cause it to not function
4. skill level of the person installing the card/pigtails/drivers.
5. some laptop vendors change the insides of the laptop without changing the model number.
6. RF-KILL switches that many Japanese laptop vendors are required to install which must be disabled/enabled in BIOS.

Some of these items are addressed below. The real answer to will it work? is it depends.

It depends on:

Only IBM branded cards will work.

If you have purchased a non-IBM card or want to know what is up, read on, then call IBM to complain.

Not for the faint of heart:

1. Start up regedit
2. enter \hkey_local_machine\system\currentcontrolset\control\class
3. find atheros
4. add
   1. Name=abolt type=string value=1
   2. Name=disableTurboG type=string value=0

There could be several things you need to setup manually before your radio will turn on.

To get the PCi ID from your card, run the command:
lspci -n

FIRMWARE / DRIVERS
.

ANTENNAS

.

Books, nay dissertations, have been written about this. In general, an omni is always nice for an access point.

Every situation is unique - you need to consider that you are dealing with two way communication devices, so your throughput will be limited by your weakest link.

If you are trying to connect from a centralized location in an office, a stout omni is a good place to start (we have 2 dbi, 5 dbi, 8 dbi and 15 dbi omnis suitable for indoor use). If you are a WISP and are trying to connect to customers over some distance, through varied terrain, trees, buildings, etc. you will have to consider how many subscribers/clients you are attempting to connect, in what direction, through which obstacles. If you are working with fairly short distances and no interference, our 8 dbi omni or 15 dbi omni may be sufficient. If you are in a difficult environment, you may wish to look at sectorized omnis, or break your coverage into zones covered with yagis, patches or panels on different channels, sufficiently isolated to minimize co-interference.

If you are establishing a long distance point-to-point link, going over water, through obstacles, etc. the multi-beam antennas would be your best option.

One customers experience: With one tree in the way, a 200mW radio and a 24 dBi grid antenna, the signal strength was -80 dB. With the tree cut down, the signal strength improved to -65 dB. The tree caused 25 dB of loss.

Why? Think PHYSICS. Look up Fresnel zones. Think of every leaf on your tree blowing in the wind, reflecting signals in 5000 different directions...

The benefits are:

1. Increased client capacity

   By utilizing one radio per sector, you can increase the number of connections made per area. So if you use a three-sector approach using channels 1,6, and 11 with three 802.11b access points (one per sector), you should triple the capacity for that coverage area since there will be fewer connections made per sector vs an omni.

2. Higher gain / better signal levels

   Sectorized antennas typically support uptilt/downtilt features so you can easily adjust the antenna to cover the maximum useful area. Sector antennas have better gain and radiation patterns than omni antennas for this purpose.

3. Increased channel availability

   Since sector antennas support a particular channel in one area, a second Access Point at a distance in the same sector, or near the horizon at your next Wi-POP should be able to run with a different channel & no interference issues, even if they in general cover the some of the same area.

4. Co-interference minimization

   Properly isolated, sector antennas should not interfere with each other. They are directional in nature & have good front-to-back ratios.

5. Increased availability

   If one AP / sector is damaged, the other APs / sectors continue to operate. You reduce total system downtime by utilizing a sectorized approach.

ALIX BOARDS

When buying a ALIX board from Netgate, either separately or as part of a “kit”, be aware that you will have to perform the following steps (details of which are outlined by other posts on the pfSense lists.):

1. Update the ALIX BIOS to the latest version. Go to this link for the latest download (http://www.pcengines.ch/alix2.htm) and there is a link there for the instructions for using FreeDOS.
2. Download the latest version of pfSense to a CF card (many ways to do that), but make sure you download the embedded version. We use a CF reader/writer and physdiskwrite.
3. Set up pfSense. I am surprised how many people try to plug-n-play a raw download of pfSense. Starting with the assignment of interfaces, the set up must be done or either nothing or unpredictable results will occur.
4. Suggest that once you get a running system, use the backup capability to save your configuration in XML.

If you order an assembled system, such as any of the Netgate m1n1wall products, Netgate will perform steps 1, 2 and assign at least one interface (vr0) to the LAN.

POWERG8 WRAP

We have never had a report on our PowerG8 WRAP boards locking up. (as of 4/20/2005).

Some veteran WRAP board users have reported that lockups/crashes are usually power and/or static issues. Any system will crash if the power gets too low. Any system may lockup when there is a lightning strike nearby or the systems are not properly grounded or isolated from hot towers.

Here are some suggestions:

• Make sure any outdoor unit is electrically isolated and well grounded.
• Use good surge arrestors on the RF and Ethernet sides and make sure they are grounded as well. (This may present a problem if you are using POE but it can be done.)
• Use properly grounded, shielded CAT5 cable if your CAT5 runs outside your tower-top box.
• Ensure you have good power backup in case of failures.

This depends upon the configuration of your PowerG8 system: one or two radios, And which miniPCI cards are installed. Right and left assume you are looking at the front of the box with the PowerG8 logo on it.

Single Radio Units:

CM-9 - The primary lead is the one on the right and secondary lead is attached to the antenna on the left. So, the 802.11a is the antenna on the right/left [pick one] and the 802.11b/g radio is the one on the left/right [pick the other one].

2511 & 3054 – The primary lead is on the left and the secondary lead is attached to the antenna on the right.

Dual Radio Units:

Each lead goes to the primary contact on each radio card. The first radio listed is the lead on the left and the second radio list is on the right. So, with a PowerG8 WRAP 2511-CM9 the primary antenna connection on the 2511 radio is connected to the antenna on the left and the primary antenna connection on the CM-9 is attached to the antenna on the right.

Better yet, the labels that are placed next to the antenna connectors during assembly are intended to help.

For Single Radio units the labels are:

“1 Primary Antenna” – attached to the primary transmit/receive connector on the radio card.

“Auxiliary Antenna 2” – attached to the alternative connector on the radio card.

For Dual Radio units the labels are:

“Radio 1” – attached to the primary antenna connector on the radio (e.g., 2511, 3054, CM-9) that appears in the product name first.

“Radio 2” – attached to the primary antenna connector on the radio (e.g., 2511, 3054, CM-9) that appears in the product name second.

The issue is that at (or around) 0 °C the crystal oscillators used to run the board (and radio cards!) will freeze. This typically isn't a problem while operating, as the board will make enough heat to keep the inside of the case above 0 °C, except in severe cold or cold-with-wind conditions. However, during "cold start" conditions, its impossible to "unstick" the oscillators merely by driving them, and without the clocks, the rest of the components won't make heat.

Adding the resistive heater and logic to control it would raise the cost (and price) of the unit significantly.

As a suggestion, you could use the existing knock-out to power a small board with a digital thermometer, a small logic chip that can read the thermometer, and a relay that can in-turn supply up to 18 VDC to the board (powering it on) once the temp is above 0 °C. Once the system is on, if the temp in the box drops below, say 5 °C, you could switch the heater back-on, assuming that you can get enough Watts up the pole to supply both the resistive heating element and the board itself.

PCI ADAPTER

INTERESTING QUESTIONS

.

1) The AP will allow up to some set number of associations before failing to associate new clients. The number is in the the vxworks (or m0n0wall) code, but it, like the hostap and madwifi drivers are, essentially "unlimited". Most code these days introduces a "soft limit" of 1024 associated clients.

There is a "hard limit" in that the "Association ID" (AID) space is only "so big". Basically AIDs 1 - 2007 are defined, and AIDs are "per BSS", so you could have, at a maximum , 2006 stations associated with a single AP.

2) If those clients are active, however, the 802.11 protocol scales poorly, and you'd never get that many online. This is one of those "it depends" answers, since it really depends on the traffic being generated by the AP clients "right now".

In short, anyone who promises you a specific number of users per AP has probably constructed a test scenario to connect N users with low bandwidth usage and is reporting an artifically high number. Real world usage will vary depending upon bandwith used, physical environment and proximity to the AP.

Return Loss is the portion of a signal that is lost due to a reflection of power at a line discontinuity (where a change is made from say a cable to a connector, or a connector to an antenna). Return loss is a logarithmic measurement, so it is very useful when displaying very small reflections.

On the other hand, VSWR is the ratio of voltage applied to voltage reflected. VSWR is a linear measurement, so it is more useful when displaying larger reflections since small differences are not compressed as they are in a logarithmic measurement (e.g. Return Loss).

2611 CB5 PLUS

The CB5's that we have installed will stop allowing connections after some period of time. I can still connect to them remotely but when I go Running Status-->Station Info, all I get is a blank table. When I reboot the Cb5, then users show up in the table.
What is happening and how can I fix it?
We've experienced this problem when customers do not use a shielded cable going from the PoE injector to the CB5 and / or the PoE injector is not properly grounded.
Try replacing the cable and grounding the injector.

How can we set the ACCESS POINT mode for the 2611 CB5 PLUS or 2611 CB5 PLUS EXT?
Here are the instructions for the CB5+ firmware upgrade through HyperTerminal. You have to upgrade the firmware using the zmodem with console cable.

Be careful, if you fail any command during the below procedures, DO NOT power off or reboot the unit. You MUST retry the same command until it's success, thanks.

EOC-3220, EOC-3220 EXT, EOC-3220+

How do I reset the EOC-3220 / EOC-3220 EXT / EOC-3220+ back to factory default settings?

An RS-232 null modem serial cable is required for this procedure.

1.  Connect the EOC-3220 to your computer with a null modem serial cable.

2.  Start a HyperTerminal session: Click Start and then select Programs -> Accessories ->         Communications -> HyperTerminal.

3.  After the HyperTerminal window appears:
a.    Give this new connection a name.   Ex: EOC-3220.
b.    Select correct COM port.   Ex:COM1.
c.    Set baud rate as "38400", data bits "8", parity "none", stop bits "1", and flow control as "None". Then press “OK” to bring up the HyperTerminal window.

4.  Wait until the "#" is displayed in the HyperTerminal window.

5.  Type "flash reset", then hit enter.

6. Type "reboot", then hit enter.  After the device reboots, all settings will be at factory default.

Where can I find updated firmware?

WIRELESS CALCULATORS

dBm
dBm: decibel (referenced to milliwatts). dBm is a measured power level in decibels relative to 1mW. It is useful for looking at gain or attenuation.

dBi
dBi: Decibel (referenced to isotropic radiator)

mW
mW: milliwatts
Using dB notation simplifies power calculations in communications systems. For example, if the measured power at the input of an amplifier is 3 dBm and the gain of the amplifier is 20dB, then the measured output power after the amplifier should be 3 dBm + 20 dB = 23 dBm. 23 dBm = 200mW.

mW to dBm = 10Log₁₀(Watts) + 30

The 2.4GHz spectrum is free (unlicensed) because it is a terrible bandwidth for reliable communications. Why else would the FCC give it away?

Seriously, the 2.4 GHz frequency is absorbed by water (think microwave ovens) and wood, and what isn't absorbed is reflected. Think about the 5000+ leaves on a tree blowing in the wind. 5000+ little reflectors interfering with your 2.4 GHz signal.

Free space loss = 36.56 + 20Log₁₀(Frequency) + 20Log₁₀(Distance in miles)

1st Fresnel Zone radius (Km) = 17.3 x Square root ((Obstacle Distance x (Total Link - Obstacle Distance)) / (Frequency in GHz x Total Link))

1st Fresnel Zone radius (miles) = 72.1 x Square root ((Obstacle Distance x (Total Link - Obstacle Distance)) / (Frequency in GHz x Total Link))

Obstacle free radius = 0.6 x 1st Fresnel Zone radius

Radius of nth Fresnel zone (meter) = Square root ( (n x wave length x Obstacle distance x (Total Link - Obstacle Distance)) / Total Link )

Per the recommendation of the FCC, the installation of high gain directional antenna to the system, which are intended to be operated solely as a point-to-point system, and whose total power exceeds +30 dBm EIRP, requires professional installation. It is the responsibility of the installer and the end user that the high power systems are operated strictly as a point-to-point system.

Systems operating as a point-to-multipoint system or those that use non directional antennas cannot exceed +30 dBm EIRP power requirement under any circumstances, and do not require professional installation.

RoHS Compliance

Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS).

The European Union Directive 2002/95/EC requires the substitution of various heavy metals (lead, mercury, cadmium, and hexavalent chromium) and brominated flame retardants (polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) or polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE)) in new electrical and electronic equipment put on the market from 1 July 2006.

Many of our products are RoHS compliant, and will be marked as such on each webpage if we know.

For certain products, there is a RoHS exemption regarding "...network infrastructure equipment for switching, signaling, transmission as well as network management...".