WiFi incompatibility on Seattle metro?
 

I am a Seattle kid who loves his n810. I am on the bus for nearly an hour each way of my commute every weekday. The bus I take is usually one of the many WiFi capable buses in the Seattle metro fleet. Unfortunately, both the n800 I had before (still have, actually, if anyone's buying), and the n810 I have currently, have problems on the bus WiFi. I can connect without error. I can usually start refreshing my feeds and load a website just fine for about a minute. After starting to receive data, though, all of a sudden I can't receive anything. Trying to go to websites will just show the bouncing progress bar and "Connecting". My feed refresh will stop. The connection still reports as connected, however. Sometimes, if I disconnect and reconnect, I will once again be able to receive a bit of data, but then it will stop in the same manner.

To eliminate device specific issues, please note that I tried both my n800 and n810 with the same result, and I have had no problem on any other 802.11 networks.

I would really like to be able to connect to the bus' WiFi during this otherwise unproductive chunk of my day. Does anyone have any insight to this issue?

Thanks.

Re: WiFi incompatibility on Seattle metro?
 

A few questions.

a) are you actually receiving data... during that first minute have you every actually loaded a page?

b) have you every tried turning off IM and all other things like RSS, turning on flash and enabling pop-up windows and reconnecting. Most sites like this have a landing page that needs to be completed before access is granted.

other than that you could always try calling the bus people and see if they have any insight.

Re: WiFi incompatibility on Seattle metro?
 

I had similar problems when my router was set to B mode only. Changing it to B/G fixed it.

Re: WiFi incompatibility on Seattle metro?
 

Brontide-
a) are you actually receiving data... during that first minute have you every actually loaded a page?
-Yes. For instance, I'll usually be able to get to the gmail login page. Sometimes I'll even make it to my gmail account. By the time I try to open a message, however, it's done.

b) have you every tried turning off IM and all other things like RSS, turning on flash and enabling pop-up windows and reconnecting. Most sites like this have a landing page that needs to be completed before access is granted.
-This network does have a landing page, which I am able to use successfully for initial connection. I have not tried turning off those other features, however. If I can get past the landing page, do you still think these steps might help?

Texrat-
This is a router side fix though, right? There isn't anything I could do on my end?

Re: WiFi incompatibility on Seattle metro?
 

Correct, and I can't gurantee it will fix your issue. But unless your device itself is at fault (and you can test this on other wifi access points), I'd suspect something to do with router configuration or signal.

Re: WiFi incompatibility on Seattle metro?
 

Bummer. After I noticed this with my n800, I noticed that people with laptops were connected and loading web pages without problem. I read somewhere that they changed the wifi radio chipset in the n810, so I was hopeful that this would resolve the issue. No luck. I wonder why the n8x0's wifi performance would differ in situations like this, whether it be due to the network being 802.11b or not.

Re: WiFi incompatibility on Seattle metro?
 

The converse can also be true: in the hospital my N800 connected almost perfectly to their wifi but my IBM laptop gave me fits.

Welcome to the wonderful world of wireless!

Re: WiFi incompatibility on Seattle metro?
 

Indeed. I used to work in consumer electronics. I worked on a UMPC which used a few wireless standards. I know that compatibility issues are plentiful. I guess I was just hoping that this wasn't one of those situations, and that you guys knew of some black magic to make it work. Thanks for your time.

Re: WiFi incompatibility on Seattle metro?
 

What power and power saving settings do you have?
Control panel --> connectivity-->connections-->edit-->next-->next-->advanced-->other
Last weekend I lost all connectivity at home and reset these to 10mw and intermediate and everything immediately restored.

Re: WiFi incompatibility on Seattle metro?
 

Interesting. I'll give this a shot. Currently, I'm set to 100mw and maximum. How will changing this to 10mw/intermediate affect my connectivity on other networks? Should I toggle this only when trying to use networks with which I'm having problems and switch back after? Are there any drawbacks to using this setting in general?

Thanks for the info!

Re: WiFi incompatibility on Seattle metro?
 

According to a message from Nokia several months back, the 10mW/100mW setting shouldn't be an issue at all. The 10mW setting is only for those countries where there are legal resons for not using 100mW. Dropping to 10mW won't even help on battery usage, as the data is sent in bursts anyway (if anything it'll make it worse).

What you should look into in that section is the timeout settings. Some routers have trouble with the shorter timeouts introduced in newer versions of the OS. I believe there is a setting for that in that same section - but I'm not on OS2008 so I'm a bit vague on what it's called.

Longer timeouts will work with all routers, but your N810 battery will be drained a bit faster (although not critically so - after all, the longest timeout used to be the default setting in OS2007 a year ago)

(Note - the timeout is about power saving - the 10mW/100mW setting is _not_).

Re: WiFi incompatibility on Seattle metro?
 

Might this be the Power saving setting with options On (maximum), On (intermediate), and Off?

Re: WiFi incompatibility on Seattle metro?
 

Wow! I tried it out on the way home, and setting the Power saving setting to On (intermediate) did the trick. Thank you so much!

Re: WiFi incompatibility on Seattle metro?
 

Glad TA-t3 was able to help you, and it was something simple!

Re: WiFi incompatibility on Seattle metro?
 

Next time you have a problem don't wait so long to ask :)
Does it fix your 800?
And what do you want for your 800?

Re: WiFi incompatibility on Seattle metro?
 

Yes, that's the one. The "power saving" here is directly related to the timeout setting - that is, how quickly the Nx00 will go into wi-fi power saving mode. The current default is 200ms I believe, while in the past it was 1000ms. With the shorter timeout setting it drops into power saving mode faster, which saves battery. But some routers don't work well with it, particularly some types which can support multi-SSID's at the same time, and some others that are plain broken. Mostly it works very well though.

Re: WiFi incompatibility on Seattle metro?
 

A-greed.

I'll check, but I'm guessing it will work the same. I was thinking $200.