Wireless bridge

Thu Jun 18 16:11:02 UTC 2009

On Thu, 2009-06-18 at 11:54 -0400, Peter Boone wrote:
> Oh I know. Luckily it's located in an industrial area just on the
> outskirts
> of the city. There isn't a lot of other WiFi (in my opinion); 3-5
> total
> SSIDs spread across 2 of the 3 physical channels (1,6,11) depending on
> which
> rooftop you measure from. 

2.4 and 5GHz license-free Wifi is license free because the frequencies
are shared with the ISM (Industrial/Scientific/Medical) services. In an
industrial area, competing WiFi is the least of your worries. These
frequencies are also used by industrial grade heating units. Got anyone
in the neighbourhood running a large plastic shrink wrap machine, for
example?

You can't directly detect these other users with a Wifi transceiver.
Depending on the nature of the interference you *might* be able to hear
it directly on a scanner (if you can find one that covers those
frequencies), but you really need a good spectrum analyzer to tell
what's going on.

Anyway, don't assume the competition for spectrum is only other Wifi
units.

--lyndon