[CUWiN-Dev] 802.11 beacon strength oscillation

[Bill Comisky]

I've been trying to do some crude QA on our nodes before they go out the 
door; a sanity check to make sure everythings working (pigtail is 
connected, etc).  So I've been plugging them in at one end of our lab 
space, and looking the received beacon strength at another node at the 
other end of the lab with:  tcpdump -ne -y ieee802_11_radio

Somes nodes show a steady ~65dB signal level, while a sizable percentage 
have beacon levels that alternate between ~45dB and ~65dB, maybe every 
20-30 packets.  The behavior seems tied to the radio, switching the radio 
could change the behavior.  I haven't started bandwidth testing to see if 
there is any difference, but wanted to see if anyone knew if perhaps this 
was normal (an 802.11 "thing") or could offer an explanation..

The hardware:
Metrix Mark I
radio == Atheros 100mW b/g minipci,  NL-5354MP PLUS ARIES2(F)

thanks for any insight,
Bill

--
Bill Comisky
bcomisky at pobox.com