[pyrosee]

Soo... is there anyway to hack the t-mo router and get mooooore poooowwwer muhahaha?

[John Clark]

I've not seen the TMo Router. Does it have a model number on it?

[rivviepop]

Originally Posted by pyrosee

Soo... is there anyway to hack the t-mo router and get mooooore poooowwwer muhahaha?

You mean increase the mW from it's default upwards? Not to my knowledge, very few commercial stock firmwares for routers allow this (some do - rare tho) as it's not really a friendly thing to give a consumer (crank it from 28mW to 200mW and knock out all your other neighbors on the same channel, for instance - pretty unusable though at that power). You'd prolly have to install some 3rd party firmware on the router to expose the knobs to twiddle.

[pyrosee]

Originally Posted by rivviepop

You mean increase the mW from it's default upwards?

Yeah... before this I had that 300N and I had a much better signal on it, but that draft N and UMA didn't get along very well. I know the more you increase the mW the noisier it gets, but I am sure I could do with getting a little stronger signal. Trust me, my neighbors airport blasts me in here so a little payback would be fine with me... Those airports must xmit and super high power.

[sgtcasey]

edit

[hotburnttoast]

will any of those settings on the BB FAQ page that John Clark made a sticky of, will those changes in my Linksys router effect my deviced that are currently connected? Also will it effect the ports I have forwarded on my router for my Xbox 360?, also what does adding a MAC address do?

[John Clark]

If you're referring to the settings that Rivvie posted here (that we copied to the FAQ) they shouldn't affect any of your other devices.

As far as where to change it you have to log into your router. Go to the Wireless Tab. There should be sub-tabs under that. I don't have the stock Linksys Firmware anymore so not sure exactly where it is but on the DD-WRT is under Wireless then Advanced Settings.

[hotburnttoast]

Yes I was referring to that sticky......I gave up couldn't locate them. I have had a Hot Spot Router here I plugged into my network and got instant UMA connection, plus with the MIR of 50.00 its free anyways. Just gonna roll this way for now and see how it goes

[pyrosee]

Alright well 2 days of testing with the different settings. I have to say I am experiencing less failed calls. I left it on Chan 11. This actually seems to be helping! I wonder if the beacon interval is causing the slightly quicker battery drain... whatever it is I don't care. It's working better now. I will still get a call failed from time to time when I attempt to dial a call. Maybe I will try channel 3 next...

John you had asked what the model number on the linksys t-mo router was earlier sorry for the late reply: Under the router it's WRT-54G-TM.

[absoluteevel]

Before blindly changing to a channel, do a wireless survey and see what channels are used by other routers in your neighborhood. From 1, 6 and 11, see which one is not used, and other routers are farthest away from.

If there are any other 2.4ghz devices operating near by, such as cordless phones, don't use channel 1. I have noticed that you will always drop connections when the phone rings if you are on channel 1.

Is your "call failed" happening after the phone has been sitting there idle for a while? I believe the phone is in a sleep mode and it takes a while to wake up the wifi connection. I have noticed giving it 10 or so seconds to recover after a long idle will make the calls successful.

[pyrosee]

I usually will get 2 or 3 consecutive "call fails" when attempting to make a call (which only occurs when I am on UMA - works fine on EDGE) before it actually goes through.

I had only 1 other wireless near me, and it's on channel 1, hence why I chose 11. So perhaps I will leave it there.

[rorycs]

I am happy to see that for the most part, the changes that I have posted on several forums (they have made their way around it seems) have helped many who have had issues with UMA.

As for me, I began with the WRT54g v.2 and had terrible connections. Thinking that the T-Mobile router would be better I got the D-Link T-Mobile router. That was horrile, I returned it the next day. UMA was worse and the wired and wireless throughput were awful. I next got the T-Mobile Linksys WRT54g-TM (they are v 1.1 by the way as I recall). It was much better with throughput, and the UMA connections were slightly better... but I could not maintain one single call without a problem. Linksys originally diagnosed this as a router problem, and I exchanged it for a new one. Same problem. I have also tried the Netgear Mimo router, and the Linksys WRT-54GS. Same problem with all of them.

In desperation I contacted Linksys again and went over the settings one by one. (I do have network knowledge) Ultimately, Linksys tech came up with the settings listed above and the suggestion of channel 3.

The explanation that I have not seen here is the channel issue. Most routers are set to default to channel 6. Given that we are the 'techie' users and that the average user merely connects his router and has no idea of channel settings, channel 6 is the most crowded channel for this type of traffic. Additionally T-Mobile suggests that you only use 1,6,or 11 with their branded routers as when set to these channels, they have the ability to remotely diagnose your router (when set to another channel they can not). Linksys Tech felt that channel 3 was one of the least used channels, and that the actual wireless transmission was somehow cleaner on channel 3 (I have no background to discuss that claim).

These settings are available on every wireless router and should result in better UMA connections (which seems to be the consensus).

In the end, I am actually now using a stock WRT54g v8 with the settings I have outlined with rock solid UMA connections.....

[sgtcasey]

edit

[xyrcncp]

I changed my router settings to what Rivvie posted with the exception of the channel, I left mine at 6. I noticed a substantial decrease in battery life today. I had 80% battery at 2pm when I was at work, got back home at around 2:15pm and by 6pm my battery was at 30%. Right now (6:30pm) it's at 15%. I'm assuming that the increased beacon interval might be the cause? My linksys was set to 100 by default.

Oddly enough, my AOL IM works now after these new settings and low battery. Dunno if it's a coincidence or what, but it was not working for the longest.

[John Clark]

I've noticed the same decrease in battery life....

[xyrcncp]

Originally Posted by John Clark

I've noticed the same decrease in battery life....

I'll give it a couple of days with the beacon interval set at 50 and a couple set at 100. At the same time, I'll see if this was why my AOL IM was not working before.

[John Clark]

I may change mine back to 100 as well. I never had that much trouble with UMA except for getting a ways from my router it would drop. However, the DD-WRT has fixed that (increasing the power.)

[xyrcncp]

Originally Posted by John Clark

I may change mine back to 100 as well. I never had that much trouble with UMA except for getting a ways from my router it would drop. However, the DD-WRT has fixed that (increasing the power.)

Which version of DD-WRT did you get? I have a Linksys WRT54G v2.2 and would like to increase its power.

[John Clark]

I am using DD-WRT v2.3 on a WRT54G v1.0.

Go to Wireless >Advanced. Then scroll down to "Xmit Power." Default is 28mW. They say a safe increase is to 70 (that's what I put in.) Much more than that and you get more noise. Over 100 and you really heat up the router.

[rivviepop]

Regarding the beacon interval, it does seem (logically) to be a cause of battery drain, I have noticed it as well a bit. Since the device and router are now heartbeating twice as much (and as fast) when going from 100ms to 50ms it stands to reason - it's almost like driving 70 instead of 35, you're gonna use more gas to maintain the same RPMs at a higher speed.

(all you car nuts ignore gear ratios and stuff and just work with me here )