Troubleshooting a wireless network link

Michael Dunn - May 06, 2016

Since moving to our new home, I've been trying to get a 200m wireless network link to work well (it
brings Internet connectivity to a second building). It has been working, but because there isn't a
clear line-of-sight, and because it uses the easily absorbed 2.4GHz band, performance inversely
correlates to dampness. Wet snow or heavy rain will wipe out the link. For more background, see my
previous blogs, linked at the end.

Before trying anything too fancy like external antennas or Fresnel RF lenses I took the low-tech
approach and experimented again with the link locations. Moving the "base station" link 10m
northwest made a significant improvement: 12dB or more in bad weather, somewhat less is good.
This brought bad-weather performance to better than what good-weather performance used to be.
Yay.

Note that though the links are made for outdoor use, I preferred to keep them inside, where I'm sure
they'll last longer. I don't know how much signal strength I would gain without walls in the way.

Now that I had a more acceptable signal (the range is about -79 to -74dBm), the links' built-in speed
test returned from 7-18 Mbit/s. "Excellent", I thought. But then I visited Speedtest.net via the remote
network, and performancesucked, to use the technical term. Ping time was good, and upload
speed was perhaps being limited by my actual Internet connection, but download speed was around
700 kbit/s. What?

This made no sense to me. I might not have the fastest connection around, but I usually get 2-3.5
Mbit/s. What was going wrong?

As I've written previously, these EnGenius ENH202 links are pretty good quality, but suffer from
utterly worthless manuals. Soit was just me and the 202's configuration screens. Who would
emerge victorious?

My first thought was WiFi interference. I explicitly set all the WiFi channels: routers at both ends to
1, links to 11. No help.

There's a link distance setting (1-30km). I have no idea what it does, but did have it set to ~15km,
thinking that might up the Rx sensitivity (it hadn't). Imagining the setting might impose some sort of
turnaround delay (unlikely, but one's imagination can get carried away), I reset the distance to 1km.
No help.

What else could I try? Wellthe links support all the fashionable 802.11 modes (B, G, & N), and
were set to Mixed. Given the relatively unstable signal strength (moving foliage or raindrops), I next
reasoned (in total ignorance of course) that perhaps the mode kept switching, causing repeated
connection pauses. I set the mode to "N Only". No help.
I felt I might be onto something however. With the wireless mode fixed to "N", I turned to the Data
Rate setting, which had been set to Auto. The manual settings are labelled MCS0 to MCS15. What?
Wikipedia set me straight on these Modulation and Coding Schemes.

Worrying as with the mode that a varying signal might incur pauses due to MCS switching, I
changed Data Rate to MCS8, the lowest setting using two "spatial streams" (the ENH202s have two
internal antenna patches). No help.

Okayjust keep goingdon't give up yet. I set the data rate to MCS0 the lowest for one spatial
stream. No h Wait! Believe it or not, this did it. Using the Speedtest site, I suddenly saw speeds
limited only by my ISP. The link was workingto the best of its ability. Help.

Of course, I have no idea if I found the optimum solution. What other combinations of settings might
achieve the same results? And if my ISP suddenly offered 10 Mbit/s, would the link keep up? I don't
know. But at least I triumphed over adversity (the manual), and we can now effortlessly watch
YouTube videos, in whatever weather, wherever we damn well please.

Also see:
 New house brings Internet questions & wireless links
Yagi to the rescue?

Michael Dunn is an editor at EDN with several decades of electronic design experience in various
areas.

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