Is FedEx truck killing my Wifi?
At work, we have 2 access points sitting side by side. We have our own setup with a trusty (but rusty) gargantuan linksys switch and a crappy sonicwall. The guys who share the office space with us have watchguard firewall for their super duper vpn garbage. For over 6 months we were happily chugging along without interfering each other.
Few weeks ago we suddenly started having very strange issues. Every day, at around 10 am the Wifi in the office would suddenly choke and die. For about 10-20 minutes you couldn't even see the SSID. And then it would come back by itself. At first I figured the Access Point was shot. Fortunately I had a brand new spare lying around. We've been planning to swap it out for few months now but I didn't want to do this during work hours because of the productivity issues.
But that did not help. The new AP would die every day at around the same time, exactly like the old one did. Today I talked to one of the guys that use the second AP. It turns out that they are getting knocked off at around the same time every day too! Now this proves that I'm not loosing my mind - this is not just me, this is the whole office.
Today we got hit slightly earlier - at 9:30. So the guy popped out of his lair and we started mucking around with AP's. We plugged them in, unplugged them, switched around power supplies, changed positions, reset their settings and etc... Nothing helped. Only thing I can come up with is - there has to be something going on in this building, or around it at 10 am every day that fucks up the Wifi!
The guy then pops his head out the window and says: "There's a FedEx truck right below us". I'm thinking "no way" but hey, let's see what happens. So we both are sitting there watching the mail drone running in and out of the truck delivering packages. As soon as the truck pulls out and drives away, I hear the girls in the office squealing with joy - a sure sign that Wifi just came back up and they can print and use their email again.
Is it a coincidence? Or does FedEx have some industrial strength Wifi AP mounted in the truck? I did a quick google but I can't find anything except stories about Kinkos providing Wifi services, and some bullshit about Bluetooth bar code readers. It seems that we are the only ones experiencing this issue right now. So we constructed a plan. On Monday I'm in school but I'll have someone here camp out in front of the window and stalk the FedEx guy - and then compare our downtime with the time of the FedEx visit. If it turns out that these times are the same, I'm going to hunt down the delivery guy on Tuesday and personally ask him what kind of shit dos he keep in his truck...
posted by Luke @ 9/30/2005 10:27:00 AM permalink
Szaman2
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