My Actiontec GT701-WG router pretty much obliterates the 17m band when its
radio is active. It's probably causing some interference on other bands,
but 17m is pretty much useless when it's active. Changing the router's WiFi
channel has no effect on the noise.

Since the PC in the shack is hard-wired, I can disable the router's radio
if I need to, but I'd rather fix the problem.

Anybody ever encountered a problem like this and fixed it? I could switch
to another compatible brand of router if I knew that it was trouble free.

--
Bert Hyman W0RSB St. Paul, MN

On Wed, 17 Nov 2010 17:38:37 EST, Bert Hyman wrote:

My Actiontec GT701-WG router pretty much obliterates the 17m band when its
radio is active. It's probably causing some interference on other bands,
but 17m is pretty much useless when it's active. Changing the router's WiFi
channel has no effect on the noise.


Seems a bit of a jump in frequency to make that much of a difference?

--

Henry Pizzinger Institution
for the Mentally 31337
AzzMazta, Chairman & CEO
www.xcopfly.com

wait untill you get one of the new smart meters
from youre power company


--
AL'S COMPUTERS
"AzzMazta" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 17 Nov 2010 17:38:37 EST, Bert Hyman wrote:

My Actiontec GT701-WG router pretty much obliterates the 17m band when
its
radio is active. It's probably causing some interference on other bands,
but 17m is pretty much useless when it's active. Changing the router's
WiFi
channel has no effect on the noise.


Seems a bit of a jump in frequency to make that much of a difference?

--

Henry Pizzinger Institution
for the Mentally 31337
AzzMazta, Chairman & CEO
www.xcopfly.com

On 11/17/2010 5:38 PM, Bert Hyman wrote:
Changing the router's WiFi
channel has no effect on the noise.

It would not.. The "Radio" frequency in the router is like 800 MHZ, way
above the 17 meter band.

BUT the clock frequency... That's what is hammering you.. That or the
data rate. Most likely the clock though or everybody would be seconding
this thread.

My Actiontec GT701-WG router pretty much obliterates the 17m band when its
radio is active. It's probably causing some interference on other bands,
but 17m is pretty much useless when it's active. Changing the router's WiFi
channel has no effect on the noise.


Seems a bit of a jump in frequency to make that much of a difference?

It may be power-supply-related noise, or noise from some of the
baseband digital circuitry.

I've run into (and helped diagnose) a couple of significant
interference problems involving consumer-grade networking gear:

- Significant "birdies" on the 2-meter band, appearing every few
tens of kHz, with no modulation apparent. One of them sat right
on our city ARES group's preferred 2-meter simplex channel, and
prevented my city EC from using that channel from his condo.
Snooping around with a spectrum analyzer and a hand-held beam
pinpointed the source as his neighbor's condo (second floor, in the
back). This turned out to the location of a Netgear WiFi fouter.

The noise seems to have been harmonics from the on-board switching
voltage regulator. It was apparently coming out directly from
the board itself as RF radiation (through the case) and not
as conducted noise on the power-supply cord to the "wall wart" or
on the Ethernet cables... those were all adequately choked or
filtered.

Swapping out the router for a slightly different Netgear model
cured the problem... different switching-regulator circuitry, I
suppose.

- A nasty "buzz" audible on the squelch tails of conversations on
several local 2-meter repeaters. The interfering carrier
"wandered" across the input frequency range of the repeaters, was
strong enough to trigger the repeater receivers' carrier-sense but
didn't have a PL tone on it.

The source of the signal had been DF'ed and localized to an
apartment complex (about 15 miles from one affected repeater!) but
the original hypothesis that it was coming from a defective
roof-mounted TV antenna preamplifier hadn't panned out.
The spectrum-analyzer-and-beam technique identified the specific
apartment it was coming from, and the apartment owner volunteered
to have us check out his computer system. We confirmed that the
pulsing interference signal occurred only when he was downloading
content from the Internet. When we unplugged the 10BaseT hub, the
interfering signal went away.

The noise appears to have been a harmonic of the hub's onboard
crystal oscillator frequency... a "fast edge" of the Ethernet
clock was somehow being amplified, and leaking out onto the
wiring (it seemed to be present on both the 10BaseT cables,
on the wall-wart power wiring, and in the AC mains wiring!).
Somehow, enough of this signal was being radiated by the building
wiring to affect repeaters several miles away!

The apartment owner agreed to trade out his defective hub for one I
provided from my pile of spares (he got a few extra ports out of
the deal), and the problem was gone.

So, yes, there are all sorts of ways that a defective network
device can emit spurious signals... often in frequency ranges which
seem far separated from the equipment's nominal frequencies-of-use.


--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

On Wed, 1 Dec 2010 08:32:21 EST, Andy wrote:

wait untill you get one of the new smart meters
from youre power company

Not familiar with those, what are they and how/where do they cause RFI?

--

Henry Pizzinger Institution
for the Mentally 31337
AzzMazta, Chairman & CEO
www.xcopfly.com

In Bert Hyman
wrote:

My Actiontec GT701-WG router pretty much obliterates the 17m band when
its radio is active.

Before people go any farther in trying to diagnose the problem, let me
tell everyone that the problem was fixed quite some time ago. That post
was originally made in June 2008 and never made it to the newsgroup, but
was somehow just resurrected from somewhere.

I repeated the post over in rec.radio.amateur.equipment

Message-ID:

where I finally nailed it down to a bad wall wart.

Sorry for the distraction.

--
Bert Hyman W0RSB St. Paul, MN

they trasmit on the 2Ghz band and they use NON inonazing wireless signals.
havent tried listeing on its band yet to see what it might do.
herd it causes problems with some radios ect.


--
AL'S COMPUTERS
"AzzMazta" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 1 Dec 2010 08:32:21 EST, Andy wrote:

wait untill you get one of the new smart meters
from youre power company

Not familiar with those, what are they and how/where do they cause RFI?

--

Henry Pizzinger Institution
for the Mentally 31337
AzzMazta, Chairman & CEO
www.xcopfly.com

On 12/1/2010 2:59 PM, AzzMazta wrote:
On Wed, 1 Dec 2010 08:32:21 EST, Andy wrote:

wait untill you get one of the new smart meters
from youre power company

Not familiar with those, what are they and how/where do they cause RFI?


They too are computer based so the potential for RFI is greatly
increased. But they are easier to read, Some of them can be read
remotely using methods somewhat related to BPL (though it is low speed,
not broad band)

On 12/1/2010 3:00 PM, Bert Hyman wrote:
In Bert Hyman
wrote:

My Actiontec GT701-WG router pretty much obliterates the 17m band when
its radio is active.

Before people go any farther in trying to diagnose the problem, let me
tell everyone that the problem was fixed quite some time ago. That post
was originally made in June 2008 and never made it to the newsgroup, but
was somehow just resurrected from somewhere.

I repeated the post over in rec.radio.amateur.equipment



where I finally nailed it down to a bad wall wart.

Sorry for the distraction.

It is still a good discussion.. I assume he fixed it by replacing the
router.

This is stuff we need to know about cause though in this case it was a
specific make/model.. Next time it might be a different make/model.