Wireless Network Latency Spike

[JD.Thompson]

Hello,

I recently purchased a NetGear MR814 802.11b wireless router and two NetGear 802.11b Wireless USB Adapters for each desktop in my apartment.

My home network is working fine except when I do a continuous ping to the router from either computer the ping stays between 2 to 4 ms; however, the ping will jump to 3000-4000 ms every 15 to 30 seconds. If I connect a computer directly to the router with a cat5 cable I do not experience this problem so it most likely has to do with the wireless segment.

The signal strength is full strength at excellent, WEP is disabled, I upgraded the firmware of the router to the newest version and confirmed the wireless USB device has the newest driver, I tried lowering the fragmentation and RTS threshold and the preamble type on the wireless adapter (although the router reported no collisions at all), changing the packet sizes did not effect the periodical lag at all, and both computers are running Windows XP.

Where should I go from here?

Thanks for your time,

Jack Thompson

[theyneverknew]

I had been having a similar problem, though it was a SMC router and USB adapter. Anyway I ignored it for a while and then when I did a complete reformat and reinstalled windows all the problems went away :confused: Never did figure out why it was happening though :?:

[DigitalDD]

if its 802.11b or g then it runs at 2.4 ghz and anything that gives off a 2.4ghz wireless signal can cause those spikes. many things run on 2.4ghz frequencies microwave ovens, cordless phones, cell phones, certain FRS radios, x10 video transmitter/receivers, lots of amateur radio gear too. I for one notice I get high latency spikes in my connection when ever someone walk by talking on a cell phone..

[JD.Thompson]

I have found the problem is with the Wireless Zero Configuration Service in Windows XP. It is designed to automatically configure 801.11 adapters. However the MA101 Netgear adapter seams to be buggy using this. Note: in Win 2k and 98 I have tested this adapter with no problems (Netgear provides there own software for 2k and 98 unlike XP). If I allow Wireless Zero Configuration to run and connect the adapter and subsequently manually stopping the service I then no longer receive periodical latency spikes.

Now my question is: Can I manually configure the adapter without this service? If so is it possible to do this automatically on startup with something like a batch file.

[Chezman29]

I also disabled WZC and used the software with my setup. It was so long ago I have forgotten why and the reasons. Although I did a TON of reading prior to it and found that WZC wasn't applicable to all setups and lagged/spiked numerous different setups.

I use the wireless lan monitor software that came with my setup and it works great.

Did yours not come with proprietary software for setup?
Should have been with the wireless usb adapter or card.

Chez