[Dxspider-support] Trouble with Wireless Bridge

[David Hawes]

Group,

Is there a (network) doctor in the house?

We have installed a Spider node that is connected to its router via a
wireless bridge.  When it works, it works well, but the connection
reliability is very poor.  The connection from this node to our local hub
node (K2UT) drops after a variable time, usually measured in tens of
minutes, but at times the link holds for several hours.  It does not appear
to be traffic related.

Here is some information on the configuration:

ISP:			Comcast high speed (ie. cable modem)
Cable modem:	Motorola
Router:		Siemens (wired, NOT wireless)
Wireless Bridge:	Two Linksys WAP11 units.  All default settings retained.
DHCP off.  Current firmware.

Spider Box:		Pentium 133/64M Ram, Win98SE, Spider build 240-something,
SV2AGW Packet Engine for rf connects.
			A 10BaseT hub is used adjacent to the Spider box to create a LAN for the
bridge to connect to.

In addition to upgrading to latest firmware in the WAP11s, we have tried
changing channels, but that did not affect the drop outs.  It appears that
one of the units just goes deaf, blocking traffic.

Although we are not sure that it is an inactivity issue, we have never
witnessed a drop out.  Reliability seems to be good during a web browsing
session.  Before we got the Spider connected to the internet, we did notice
that the bridge seems to be reluctant to accept pings to the router.  The
first ping in a group would be significantly slower than the 2nd through
4th.

Running a Cat5E cable from the router to the Spider box is inconvenient at
best, and these WAP11s were available.  We would like to get them to work
properly.  Anyone who we've spoken to so far says that they "should work
fine," but they don't.

So, now the questions:

1.  Is there any inherent flaw in what we are trying to do?
2.  Has anyone had success keeping a Spider going across a wireless bridge?
3.  Are there any tests or additional data that we could gather to help
drive to the solution?

We are engineers here, but not network engineers, so this is perplexing to
us.  Any suggestions or guidance will be most appreciated.

Regards,

Dave N3RD