Node Report - Communitecture

[Justin Miller]

cannot maintain wireless connection for more than 1-2 minutes; my macbook doesn't have this problem at other locations

[Justin Miller]

cancel that: i just realized that personal telco doesn't like OpenDNS...it appears to be maintaining a connection.
thanks for all you do!

[Justin Miller]

alas, i spoke too soon...still only maintaining connection for a minute or two...sigh

[Michael Weinberg]

Is the wireless disconnecting, or are you only having trouble
consistantly accessing the Internet? Can you run a couple continuous
pings, one to the gateway and one to google or another site and report
back what you find?

If this is Greek to you, that's okay too.

--
Michael Weinberg
et voilà

[Russell Senior]

>>>>> "Michael" == Michael Weinberg <mic...@personaltelco.net> writes:

Michael> Is the wireless disconnecting, or are you only having trouble
Michael> consistantly accessing the Internet? Can you run a couple
Michael> continuous pings, one to the gateway and one to google or
Michael> another site and report back what you find?

It looks as if perhaps he's getting (or giving) a weak signal.
Justin, does that sound right? Where are you relative to the node?

--
Russell Senior, President
rus...@personaltelco.net

[Justin S J Miller]

apologies for a tardy response; your messages were inadvertently quarantined...

you are correct, i'm getting weak signal, though it starts out strong when i connect, and then decreases and ultimately disconnects within 1-2 minutes.  usually, to reconnect, i have to turn off the airport to reacquire the signal

I'm in the Mulberry apartments across the street from communitecture, a wee bit north, on the alley side near the bar there...amazingly, for the last two years i've had quite decent signal from personal telco, and had become a big fan. 

regarding pinging the gateway, while i'm not a techno-phobe, that is a wee bit greek to me...i am capable of following instructions, however, if you'd like to walk me through it...that said, i'm gone from my flat for another couple days...

again, i'm grateful for you both taking the time to respond to me...would certainly love to continue to use the node...

regards,
justin

--
Justin S J Miller
Portland Mediation Clinic
503/750-6154
dire...@portlandmediationclinic.com
www.portlandmediationclinic.com

[Justin S J Miller]

the wireless is disconnecting; i don't have too much trouble connecting, as i said, as long as i restart airport

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 6:05 PM, Russell Senior <rus...@personaltelco.net> wrote:

[Justin S. J. Miller]

Hi Michael and Russell,

I don't believe I heard any more back from you.  still unable to remain connected to personal telco node at communitecture for more than a minute or two.  while connected, the signal seems fine (3 out of 4 bars on my macbook).

i did note that while at Tiny's the other day, i connected to (what i think is )another personal telco node and was disconnected after a couple minutes.

i haven't changed my hardware at all, and the only configuration change is to openDNS

i sure do miss my free, solid, consistent and wonderful connection.  sadly, i'm looking into paid options.  Clear has horrible customer reviews...comcast is there, but, y'know, while 6-12mbps downstream is appealing, free is a very good price.

i know you asked about pinging, and i'm not sure if this information is of any help, but i pinged yahoo:

4 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=0 ttl=49 time=556.537 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=1 ttl=49 time=583.919 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=2 ttl=49 time=547.092 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=3 ttl=49 time=98.809 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=4 ttl=49 time=94.127 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=5 ttl=49 time=99.591 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=6 ttl=49 time=111.665 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=7 ttl=49 time=97.429 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=8 ttl=49 time=98.976 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=9 ttl=49 time=97.673 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=10 ttl=49 time=98.279 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=11 ttl=49 time=94.244 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=12 ttl=49 time=100.658 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=13 ttl=49 time=103.375 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=14 ttl=49 time=99.724 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=15 ttl=49 time=92.755 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=16 ttl=49 time=112.755 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=17 ttl=49 time=95.990 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=18 ttl=49 time=100.015 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=19 ttl=49 time=94.921 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=20 ttl=49 time=95.130 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=21 ttl=49 time=99.955 ms
64 bytes from 69.147.114.224: icmp_seq=22 ttl=49 time=98.574 ms

any ideas? or am i just out of luck?

thanks in advance for your help.
Justin

ps: i only had to reconnect once to send this email...sigh

[Tyler Booth]

Looks like the opendns change you made may be the culprit. Your ping results indicate that you have decent connectivity (at least while you were

testing)

--
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[Michael Weinberg]

Has the Communitecture IP address changed? OpenDNS works based on IP
addresses you register with them. I wonder if that causes issues if
multiple users on one connection have OpenDNS setup on their
computers. Might confuse the service which, well, I'm not sure what
that would do.

Justin, can you try turning off OpenDNS, that is removing it from your
DNS list, and seeing if that helps?

Thanks.

--
Michael Weinberg
Volunteer
Personal Telco Project, Inc.
A 501(c)(3) Non-Profit

[Justin S. J. Miller]

Thanks Michael, as I mentioned to Tyler, I tried that early on.  made no difference in terms of remaining connected to personal telco

[Justin S. J. Miller]

y'know, i thought that might have been it, so i switched back...no change, the problem cont'd

[Tyler Booth]

So just to be clear, you're having an issue of staying connected, not with getting connected? If that's the case, your laptop is likely disconnecting you due to interference or weak signal strength. 

Try sitting outside in clear line of site with the antenna for a while to see if you can duplicate the issue. When you are "disconnected" does the signal strength meter on your laptop go out, or to pages just stop loading? Try running that ping test once again when its "out"

Tyler Booth // President
ph. 503.548.2000 | fx. 503.548.2002
921 SW Washington St, Suite 224
Portland OR 97205

[Russell Senior]

>>>>> "Tyler" == Tyler Booth <ty...@stephouse.net> writes:

Tyler> So just to be clear, you're having an issue of staying
Tyler> connected, not with getting connected? If that's the case, your
Tyler> laptop is likely disconnecting you due to interference or weak
Tyler> signal strength.

When we were investigating the initial report, we were seeing someone
we thought was Justin with a very low received signal strength at our
radio. Even if Justin is getting a bunch of bars, that doesn't mean
we are able to hear him. It *might* be a problem with Justin's laptop
that isn't apparent when radios are relatively close. Or it might be
something else.

Without more information, that's my current speculation.

[Justin S J Miller]

indeed.  staying connected.  getting connected is no problem, provided that I turn the airport off and on before attempting to reconnect.

when i get disconnected, the signal strength goes out, yes.

i will try running the ping.

And thanks Tyler...I did not know you were also with stephouse; I work at KBOO and our two fine organizations did some work together this summer.  was actually on the phone with stephouse yesterday to see if you could service me, but alas, you cannot.

thanks again for working on this with me.

regards,
justin

[Tyler Booth]

Justin,

If you go to System Preferences, click on Network, then Airport, and under "Advanced" click on Ethernet. You'll see a string of letters/numbers titled "Ethernet ID" that may help Russell determine if the low signal strength device he is seeing is yours or someone else.

Tyler Booth // President
ph. 503.548.2000 | fx. 503.548.2002
921 SW Washington St, Suite 224
Portland OR 97205

[Russell Senior]

>>>>> "Tyler" == Tyler Booth <ty...@stephouse.net> writes:

Tyler> Justin, If you go to System Preferences, click on Network,
Tyler> then Airport, and under "Advanced" click on Ethernet. You'll
Tyler> see a string of letters/numbers titled "Ethernet ID" that may
Tyler> help Russell determine if the low signal strength device he is
Tyler> seeing is yours or someone else.

FWIW, there are 6 people on the Communitecture wireless right now, and
the traffic graphs imply that some people are able to move data, so it
doesn't *seem* to be a general node outage.

[Justin S J Miller]

once i am back home i will fetch the ethernet id for you...i'm skeptical that it's my box just because i don't have this problem at any other location or, to my knowledge, with any other connection.

again, i appreciate the attention.
justin

[Justin S J Miller]

gotcha

[Aaron Baer]

Actually, the fact that you don't have this problem anywhere else points to a reason that it might be your environment at home specifically. The node may be loud enough to shout something at you.. and your device may hear it.. But your device may not be loud enough to shout back to the node antenna. i.e. "can you hear me now"... "sort of... nope.. can't hear you... oh.. I can hear you... nope.. lost you again... oh.. hi... wait where'd you go... " 

In the game of radio signals especially in the 802.11 b/g stack annoying behavior like that is par for the course. It's probably not you, it's definitely not the node it's the fact that you might not be yelling back loud enough for the tolerance of the access point to remember that you're connected.

If you could mount the device you're using to connect to the network outside your house as close to the PTP source as possible you would probably see better results.. Or a device with a more directional antenna that you can put in a window and point right at the source AP.. all of these type of configurations would create a more stable connection for you.

NanoStation 2 High Power 802.11bg Outdoor/Indoor Access Point / Client Radio

http://www.invictuswireless.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=NS2

A- 

---
Aaron Baer
aa...@slyness.org
http://www.slyness.org/

--

[Justin S J Miller]

That certainly does make sense.  the only confusing part of this is that for 2 years i've been using that node with no trouble, and i haven't changed anything.  would this be affected by more people using the node (like my favorite restaurant being discovered by the critics)?

thanks,
Justin

[Christopher Chen]

If they're using microwave ovens, yes!

Chris Chen <muff...@gmail.com>
"The fact that yours is better than anyone else's
is not a guarantee that it's any good."
-- Seen on a wall

[Tyler Booth]

WIFI, uses radiowaves and is quite susceptible to an ever changing landscape of interference as well as physics (ie. signals bouncing off the walls of a newly built building in a different way than it used to before the building was there, or something as simple as leaves growing or falling with the seasons). One would expect that as it's fall, leaves would be less of a problem, but it's also wetter everywhere in general which means anything that your signal may have been going through that can soak up water is going to attenuate your signal further than it would if it were dry.

Also, people around you using their own WIFI networks (not just the personal telco network) will cause a higher level of noise that you have to "talk through". Imagine an empty gymnasium and having a conversation with someone on the other side of the room. No problem right? Then fill the room with 1000 other people also trying to have conversations with people around them....it becomes much more difficult. As people come and go, your "gymnasium" will become easier or harder to "talk" in. The best way around this is a "megaphone" (outdoor directional receiver/antenna combination). You can get one for about the cost of 1 month's internet service from your local cable company. As Aaron mentioned, the NS2 available from Invictus Networks is a great option.

Tyler Booth // President
ph. 503.548.2000 | fx. 503.548.2002
921 SW Washington St, Suite 224
Portland OR 97205

[Justin S. J. Miller]

an excellent synopsis, thank you sir.

y'all have been great to participate in my conundrum, and i am truly grateful for your time and assistance.

3 cheers for personaltelco! huzzahs!

-justin

[Justin S. J. Miller]

microwave ovens ruin our favorite restaurants AND our connectivity...

well done sir.

[Leonard Barrett]

A neighbor just notified us that the node has been down for roughly three days.

Thanks much!

LB

[Russell Senior]

>>>>> "Leonard" == Leonard Barrett <leo...@barrettecological.com> writes:

Leonard> A neighbor just notified us that the node has been down for
Leonard> roughly three days. Thanks much!

I power cycled it about 30 minutes ago. Should be okay again now.