March 24, 2005
WiFi
Tips: USB and 'Repair'
Greetings from the beautiful high-desert town of
Pahrump, Nevada. We are in the Coach Connect member
park, Terribles
Lakeside Casino and RV
Park giving WiFi seminars and helping RVers connect
their laptops to the WiFi system here. Some recurring
themes
we are seeing have prompted me to write these tips.
1. USB adapters should match your USB port. I
covered this in the "Get
the right adapter" article,
but it bears repeating. We highly recommend using
the USB type of WiFi adapter rather than the cards
or built-in type. But, that's not all. There are
2 different flavors of USB ports and your adapter
should match your computer. USB ports started out
with 1.1. Sometime in 2002 laptops started using
USB 2.0, also known as 'high-speed USB'. Most USB
adapters you will find today are designed for the
newer, faster 2.0. If you install a high-speed
USB adapter into a low-speed USB port, you may
get a message something like "no high speed
USB controller detected". However, it will
install and it will work. The box may even claim
that it is 'downward compatible' with the old 1.1
USB ports. Don't believe it! It has been our experience
that USB 2.0 adapters plugged into a USB 1.1 port
will work very poorly. Your connection will be
slow, it will drop off, and generally be VERY frustrating.
You need to either find a USB 1.1 adapter, or add
a USB 2.0 port to your computer withe something
like a cardbus. That's a PC card that plugs into
your PCMCIA slot and then has USB ports on it.
2. Repairing your connection. WiFi connections
can fluctuate in their signal and their speed.
It's part of how the technology works. A very useful
procedure you can do to get the best connection
is to 'Repair'. If you have Windows XP, you can
right-click on the little network icon - - in the
lower right corner of your screen and choose the
'Repair' command. Essentially, this process 'reconnects'
and almost always improves your signal and/or speed.
It's like, when you're on the phone and you have
a bad connection - lots of static or voices dropping
off - you might say "Let's hang up and I'll
try calling you again." Your phone call is
almost always better the second time around. Same
thing. If you have Windows 98, you will need to
find the icon for your WiFi adapter and look for
a command like 'rescan' or 'renew'. You can do
this as often as necessary. It can't hurt, and
it usually improves your connection substantially.
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