Tesing the Network

Testing your network

The easiest way to test your network is to take a laptop into each apartment and see how well it works to browse the internet.

The first thing to do is to set the laptop to look for an SSID of only "AP Wireless". On Windows XP, this is done by right-clicking on the wireless network icon in the taskbar "notification area" (the small icons near the date/time display on the right). Then select "View Available Wireless Networks" from the pop-up Menu. Next a dialog like this will appear.

Click on the "Change the order of preferred networks" link on the left and you'll see a list of networks that this computer will attempt to connect to.

For the purposes of this test, you'll want to make sure it can't connect to anything except AP Wireless so remove any SSIDs that appear in this list by clicking "remove" until the list is empty then click "add" to add " AP Wireless ". Next click on "OK" twice to save and close these settings.

Now you are ready to test!

It is important that as you wander around, you turn off, then on the wireless adapter on the laptop (most laptops have a switch for this so they can be used on airplanes where wireless isn't allowed). As you enter a new apartment or room that you want to test, turn the wireless switch to the "off" position, wait a second or two, then turn it on again. It will usually take a few moments to find the network again and once it says "connected" in the taskbar (if you are using a Windows Laptop), then you are ready to test. RO.B.IN wireless networks default to an SSID of " AP Wireless ", so this is what you'll want to be looking for (you can change this and we'll cover that a bit later).

Why do you have to do this? Wireless adapters in computers like to stay "locked" onto the wireless access point (in our case, one of the open-mesh routers) unless the signal gets really bad. Since you are wandering around and open-mesh networks have many such access points, if you don't switch off then on your wireless adapter, you'll get false results as it may be trying to talk to a router that is now farther away then another which would have a better signal. Users typically don't wander like this, so by turning off then on your wireless you'll see what a stationary user would see.

At each location, it's a good idea to refresh a page with lots of graphics a few times. You can use http://www.yahoo.com as it typically has several images. You should see each page load in under 5 seconds with no missing images if it is working well.

If you have some areas that don't work or don't work well, try moving the closest router to a location closer to the Gateway or add a Repeater and retest.