wifi signal strength?

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1

I've got a Netgear WNR3500L v2 router flashed with Tomato Firmware 1.28 on the main level and a Rasplexed Pi using Edimax EW-7811Un 802.11n Wireless Adapter [Realtek RTL8188CUS] nearly directly overhead on the next level.  The Rasplex is the only wireless client.

 

I configured the router for N only 20 MHz channel width on a channel with low interference. 

 

I seem to be getting poor signal strengh based on playback observation.  The router is showing about 6 Mbps for utilized wireless bandwidth. I'm a Linux commandline guy, but many of the normal tools that's I'd use to diagnose signal strength are not available in OpenELEC.

 

What are the appropriate commandline tools for determining signal strength on the Pi?

 

Does anyone have any configuration suggestions that might improve performance?

2

RasPlex:~ # cat /proc/net/wireless
Inter-| sta-|   Quality        |   Discarded packets               | Missed | WE
 face | tus | link level noise |  nwid  crypt   frag  retry   misc | beacon | 22
 wlan0: 0000   57.   57.    0.       0      0      0      0      0        0
RasPlex:~ #
 

RasPlex:~ # ifconfig wlan0
wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 80:1F:02:86:FB:DC
          inet addr:192.168.0.163  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1160974 errors:0 dropped:1163897 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:456091 errors:0 dropped:1 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:1788246505 (1.6 GiB)  TX bytes:46128758 (43.9 MiB)

RasPlex:~ #

Anyone have any suggestions about that?
 

3

I solved my problem by increasing the transmit  power on the Tomato router to 150 mW (from 42)

RasPlex:~ # cat /proc/net/wireless
Inter-| sta-|   Quality        |   Discarded packets               | Missed | WE
 face | tus | link level noise |  nwid  crypt   frag  retry   misc | beacon | 22
 wlan0: 0000   88.   56.    0.       0      0      0      0      0        0
 

I'll play around to find the sweet spot, but my speed appears to have improved by a factor of more than 5.

4

I solved my problem by increasing the transmit  power on the Tomato router to 150 mW (from 42)
 
RasPlex:~ # cat /proc/net/wireless
Inter-| sta-|   Quality        |   Discarded packets               | Missed | WE
 face | tus | link level noise |  nwid  crypt   frag  retry   misc | beacon | 22
 wlan0: 0000   88.   56.    0.       0      0      0      0      0        0
 
 
I'll play around to find the sweet spot, but my speed appears to have improved by a factor of more than 5.


Try changing the channel, use a WiFi analyser to find which channels are not being used by neighbours.

Regards