Re: [Madwifi-devel] card overly sensitive?

[kelsey h. <kh...@ts...>]

Jan Rychter wrote:
> I've just discovered that my card behaves badly if the signal is too
> strong. If I'm too close (1-2m) to the access point, I get signal
> quality reports of above 60/94 from iwconfig, but actual transmission
> rates drop down to 5-11Mbps. The net result is TCP throughput of about
> 600KB/s.

Yup, this is antenna and receiver saturation. The signal coming in to 
the preamplifier is too strong and clips the input of the amp, causing 
signal degradation. This is a normal phenomenon with most 802.11 hardware.

> Is this a madwifi problem at all, or is it my network hardware?

Neither, really. It's a physics problem. The only solution is to either 
decrease transmission power, use an antenna with a lower gain factor, or 
move the access point farther away from the station. Or, use wired 
ethernet when that close to the access point. :)

> --J.

Hope this clears some things up.

-Kelsey