online gaming using the KR1

[kanzass]

I purchased the KR1 and the usb 720... and am trying to get the most out of my connection....... Does anyone know of some tweaking I can do to the router to optimize my performance? Any help would be greatly appereciated!!

thanks

[thuor]

Increasing performance of Kyocera KR1 & Novatel U720

We'll there's a lot you can do but really depends on how badly off you are to start with. How is your received signal strenght on the U720? Note that there's a potential datarate hit when using the U720 in areas with low received signal strength as discussed in this post: http://www.rfwel.com/forums/showthread.php?t=127

If your signal strength is on the low side consider getting a high gain cellular antenna to attach to the U720.

Are you using the Kyocera KR1's Wirelessly or with a LAN cable? If using it Wirelessly the tricks to improve the connnectivity is the same tricks we use for regular Wireless routers and a lot have to do with minimizing on-air packet collissions. This include making sure you are on the most unoccupied channel, making sure that your AP to mobile station path is as unobstructed as possible (sometimes high gain WiFi antennas or even directional WiFi antennas help if you know the relative locations of AP & laptop).

[kanzass]

reply

First of all thanks for the reply.. I didn't have so much luck on another forum where I didn't purchase my equipment from.. ( I bought it from your store much cheaper) they told me pretty much my router was crap.....I have full signal strength most of the time with a loss of a bar or two.... but generallly I get:
@1.2m down
@200k up

The connection on my PC is wired I get great bandwith there..... it's wifi on my ps3... it logs on fine I usually have 2 bars of signal strength during games (specificallly COD4)... but I was getting 3 the first day I used it..... now I can only get 2 bars... there is only about 5' of distance from my router... I live in a studio apartment with one of those wall electric heaters in between the connection could this interfer??.... I don't think I have a reception problem with signal.. I think it is with router not directing my request properly... I think I need to tweak the setting on the router to maxamize this connection......... again thanks for the support... specifically do you think I should return the equipment and get the cradlepoint router instead... the other site recommended this.....

[thuor]

Tweaking Wireless Radio to improve performance

1.2m down and 200k up is not bad at all. We like the Cradlepoint a lot too but don't see how it could give you a drastic performance improvement either given your specific situation. So since when you connect to your desktop you are getting good bandwidth it looks like the performance hit is from the WiFi radio on the kr1? Here are just some suggestions:

1) Do you have the latest KR1 firmware? Not sure when you purchased your KR1 but there are firmware updates targeted to WiFi functionality and others targeted to the U720.
2) Do you have your KR1 secured to prevent others sharing your WiFi?
3) Have you tried to change the channel that the KR1 is using for wireless. Go to "Basic" -> "Wireless" -> uncheck Auto select and pick a channel. To figure out what channel is best you can search for an available network and see what channel your neighbors (and what strength their signals are). Using this pick the least occupied channel of channel 1, 6 or 11.
4) Do you have any interference in the 2.4GHz band? 3) above would mitigate against this though.
5) You asked about a wall electric heater in the path ... anything metallic especially if large between the transmitter and the receiver would distort the radiation pattern and cause your received signal strength (on the PS3) to reduce. Probably not a big deal if you are that close since WiFi relies on multipath propagation and you probably have a strong multipath signal. Something to look out for though.
6) You can optize the WiFi performance directly in the KR1. You access this page by "Advanced" --> "Performance" CAUTION! CAUTION! Be sure to note down what the original settings are so that you are able to revert to them should something go seriously wrong! Selecting incompatible values could actually seriously degrade your network performance so be ready to revert to what it was before. You can change your mode setting to G (hopefully you don't have any "b" radios), maximum transmit power (17dBm) - i think this is the default anyway. You could also force the datarate to 54MBps but if you do so the mobile stations will NOT be able to negotiate with the AP on a slower datarate if they experience channel degradation (the lower datarate the lower the bit-error-rate for the same signal-to-noise ratio) so your throughput may be low due to retransmissions even if it's reporting 54Mbps.

Look at the help section of that page to find out what the rest of the stuff does. Again follow the recommendations and be ready to revert to the old settings if your network gets seriously degraded.

I have included the help section of "Advanced" -> "Performance" below and indicated in blue how to modify it to boost performance

Beacon interval
Beacons are packets sent by an Access Point to synchronize a wireless network. Specify a Beacon interval value between 40 and 1000. The default value is set to 100 milliseconds. Increase beacon interval to make AP send beacons less frequently.
RTS Threshold
This value should remain at its default setting of 2346. If you encounter inconsistent data flow, only minor modifications to the value range between 256 and 2346 are recommended. The default value for RTS Threshold is set to 2346. RTS=Request to Send. This should NOT need to change this since it appears you don't have many wireless nodes and probably no hidden nodes or exposed nodes.
Fragmentation
This value should remain at its default setting of 2346. If you experience a high packet error rate, you may slightly increase your "Fragmentation" value within the value range of 256 to 2346. Setting the Fragmentation value too low may result in poor performance. DONT change this. If you reduce the fragmentation and your PS3 is sending large packets at one of the fragmented packet experiences packet loss the entire frame needs to be retransmitted seriously degrationg your througput.
DTIM interval (beacon rate)
Enter a value between 1 and 255 for the Delivery Traffic Indication Message (DTIM). A DTIM is a countdown informing clients of the next window for listening to broadcast and multicast messages. When the Access Point has buffered broadcast or multicast messages for associated clients, it sends the next DTIM with a DTIM Interval value. AP clients hear the beacons and awaken to receive the broadcast and multicast messages. The default value for DTIM interval is set to 3. Leave this as is.
Transmission (TX) Rates
Select the basic transfer rates based on the speed of wireless adapters on the WLAN (wireless local area network). Change this as discussed above.
Mode Setting
These settings determine whether 11b wireless card can be used to connect to KR1. The default setting is Mix Mode. when G Mode is enabled, only 11g wireless card can be used to connect to KR1. You can make this G. You should not have B nodes if you are trying to get maximum performance. Hopefully your router is secure and you don't have your neighbors on B slowing you down.
SSID Broadcast
Enables and disables a Service Set Identifier broadcast. When enabled, the SSID of KR1 is sent to wireless enabled devices on the LAN. Leave this.
Antenna Transmit Power
The antenna transmit power ranges from 10dBm (weak) to 17dBm (strong). The greater antenna transmit power, the longer the range of wireless communications. Select the power based on the coverage you desire for your KR1. For security reasons, certain implementations require that the antenna transmit power be adjusted to provide wireless coverage within a limited area. This should be maximum. See also previous thread on how to improve received signal stregth by antenna orientation, getting a directional antenna or high gain wifi antenna (although dont think this would do much given that you are only 5' away from AP). Note mentioned here, higher power also improves your datarate since it improves your SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) and for the same digital modulation (different bitrates use different modulation schemes) the higher the SNR the less the BER (Bit Error Rate) hence the less the retransmissions required and the higher the throughput.

[kanzass]

Thanks again for the help.......

I kinda already went through the basics...
I have the latest firmware .11 I believe.. (I just purchased it last friday from your store)
I started messing with the settings last night and saved my original settings for a backup.... (I thought about that) being that I'm really green with EVDO...
I will be home later this evening and will try these settings.....

Would I get a better connection with wired?? Is it more consistant?? I really like the wifi though...... I have a psp and a laptop and share this connection with those... (not while playing online)

[thuor]

In wireless routers in general and the Kyocera KR1 in particular wired is always better than wireless. You can get the wireless performance close to wired especially at these distances even on the KR1 and especially if you don't have major interferers or a faulty unit (would never be completely at par with wired though since you can get 100Mbps on CAT5 UTP but only 54Mbps on the air interface with cochannel and adjacent channel interference from neighbors WiFi).