General Network Problems

[dwduckie]

Hello all. I am having a problem with my network. First let me describe how things are set up.

I have a dsl connection running at about 6Mb/s. The dsl comes into a 2wire homeportal 1800hg. I disabled the wireless on it and I'm just using it as a gateway. From the 1800 I have one computer directly connected, one linksys wrt54g router for my wireless, and a hub that connects anywhere from 3-8 computers through wired connections. I like the security better on the linksys router so I use it for my wireless connections. Now, the dhcp server is the 1800hg, and dhcp is turned off on the wrt54g, so that all of the ip addresses come from the 1800hg.

My problem is this:

Running all of the computers through wired connections seldom result in any network problems. However, whenever I connect more than 4 wireless laptops to my network, none of the wired connections get internet and I cannot even connect to the 1800hg home page. I have tried shutting down to just one wired connection and 4 wireless, but there is no improvement. I am a little confused about this. Any suggestions? From what I can tell the wrt54g is working correctly. I have shut down all of the wired connections and ran 10 laptops wireless downloading Microsoft updates, but once any one of the wired connections come online, everything wired slows to a crawl and the wired connection has no internet connectivity. Mathematically, I would think that with the bandwidth I have there should be little problems running 10-15 computers at the same time, albeit a little slow, but I may be wrong. Could there be some incompatability between the wireless and the wired connections? All of the computers run windows xp professional, and one laptop is constantly connected via wireless with no problems. Help please!

[johnwill]

Personally, I'd bridge the 1800HG and turn it into a plain modem. You'll have a lot better luck running the Linksys as your only router.

[dwduckie]

Ok thank you john for your help. I bridged the modem and am running the linksys as my gateway and only router, however the problem still exists, just not as bad. I have tried to change the wireless channel, move the router, and even shut off anything that might interfere with the signal, to no avail. Is there any limit to how many computers can connect at the same time wireless or any limit to the bandwidth? All the wireless computers connect at 54Mbps, but of course that doesn't mean that is the effectual speed they are getting, as I understand that the 54Mbps is shared between all the wireless computers. They are in close proximity to each other and the exact same model; would that have any effect on the performance? Also, I am noticing that I can only connect about 15 at one time before the rest will error out when connecting stating that there is limited or no connectivity. Linksys states that whatever the dhcp settings are is how many computers I can connect at one time, but realistically I know that the bandwidth would slow things down so bad that computers would not receive the ip address from the router to connect... but is 15 is that limit?

[johnwill]

I've had as many as 15-16 computers on my network here using several different makes/models of routers at different times. However, most of them are wired connections, wireless is a whole different thing.

Trying to connect that many wireless computers to a single 802.11g channel is an exercise in futility! Remember, the real throughput of that channel is maybe half the stated 54mbits, and it's shared on a contention basis and half-duplex as well!

My practical limit for a single WAP is around 5-6 connections.

I don't know what limits you're running into simply connecting the machines to the wireless channel, I've truthfully never tried that many simply because I know it would be a waste of time! I'd get a couple of WAPs and set them up on channel 1, 6, and 11 and split the load for the wireless workstations.

[dwduckie]

Thank you again john that helps. All I was doing was installing updates for multiple computers overnight, so the connection speed was irrelevant as long as the computers could connect and download (although 56kbps might have been too slow lol). I had contacted linksys and they told me that there was no limit to the amount of computers that could connect by wireless, so your information helps me a lot more than theirs did. It makes sense that over a half duplex channel that there would be a lot of handshaking problems as well as collisions when multiple computers are connected. I will take your advice on the wireless options that you have given me. Thank you again!

[johnwill]

Good luck.