Wireless Range of i8500.

I have the 8500 with the truemobile 1400, I always connect to the "a" band and can keep a good connection anywhere in my 2000sq ft house. I can go outside to the backyard and to the frontyard and still keep a good signal. I use a netgear wab102 access point that is located in one corner of my house where my desktop is.  So are far as the range I think it's pretty good for what I use it for.

And "b" coverage will be better than "a".

Thanks for the reply.

 

johnallg said: b coverage will be better than a.

This may sound a bit stupid but how is that so. Isnt there so much more on the same band as "b" than there is on the "a" band. Also there are two cordless 2.4GHz phones in the house, which would probably cause interference.

 

Brendan

802.11a runs in the 5GHz band, while 802.11b and g run in the 2.4GHz band.  At the same power output, higher frequencies are much more sensitive to various types of interference, scattering, etc.  There are also tighter positioning requirements at higher frequencies - a move of a tiny distance (about an inch and a quarter, or three centimeters) can cut your signal strength to almost nothing.  I could go into a long dissertation on antenna and propagation theory, but that's it in a nutshell.  Yeah, there's a lot more junk in the 2.4GHz band, but it'll still penetrate better than 5GHz, hence provide better overall coverage.

I have a 2.4GHz phone, as well, and (knock wood) the phone and Truemobile 1300 haven't conflicted with each other, except for a slight intermittent hiss on the telephone when I'm using my i8500.  I understand that the phone can sometimes knock out the WLAN signal, but I haven't had that happen.  I also understand that placement of the phone, laptop, and WAP relative to each other can either make or break the system, which makes sense.  If something doesn't work, try moving the phone's base station a bit.  Strangely, the hiss on the phone has no correlation to what I'm doing on the Internet - it's not tied to when the 1300 is actually transmitting or receiving a block of data - but if the laptop is off, the phone doesn't hiss.  Weird.  It's not enough to be problematic, but it is a curiosity.  YMMV.

Glen
Inspiron 8500 2.2GHz
Radeon m9000 (with hopes of going to the 9600 at some point)
512Mb RAM
40Gb HD

Excellent and very accurate post, Glen.  You said it better and first. 

"a" is at 5ghz, and suffers more degradation from surrounding materials.  2.4ghz is less succeptable to close objects (non-metalic for both).  As for the phones, keep the base units and phones away from the router, and use a higher channel number for the router and you should not have problems.

Thanks, you've all been most helpful. I appreciate it.

Brendan