LinkSys

On May 16th, I contacted linksys support because the two
WAP-11 Access Points were hanging. The only fix for this was
to actually unplug the power to the access points and then plug them
back in.
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Hi,
I can consistently get my WAP11 to hang when I send a bunch of data though
it. For example, when I ftp a 200 meg file from my laptop to a local server,
the WAP11 will almost always hang.
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On the 17th, I received the following response:
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It would be better if you lessen the file transfer a little bit to prevent
heavy trafffic on the network.
  
If you have further questions, please contact us at (800) 326-7114 or send
us an email at support@linksys.com so that we may further assist you.
Please use this phone number given as reference for future support calls.
 
Thank you and have a nice day.
-----------

Thanks! Thats like the old joke, "Doctor, it hurts when I lift my arm
like this! - and the doctor responds, "Don't do that".

I responded to this with another email:
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Hi Gloria,
Although I believe that your workaround will fix the problem,
I'm afraid I'm not satisfied with the response.

I am using two WAP11s here at my workplace. There are normally
two or three people using the wireless concurrently. How is
it that I can keep them from not doing large file transfers?

I don't really care how slow the wireless is, but I don't
feel that the WAP11 should HANG and require a hard reboot
to recover.

I have successfully ran several users though an old apple
airport and have never had it hang - EVER.

Have you had other customers with this problem? Is it
hanging because of too much data on the wireless side, or
too much data on the ethernet side? If its too much data
on the ethernet side, can you offer some suggestion on
how to limit the data throughput?
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And got the following response:
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With regards to your problem, you may try setting the thresholds (RTS and
Fragmentation) of both WAP11 to 2304 but there's no assurance that you'll
not experience hang ups anymore. You may also try to upgrade the firmware of
your access points. 
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Um, I've checked, and I'm already running the latest firmware, so that
leaves the other thresh-holds. I was busy, so I waited a few months, 
and just made a point to rebooting the APs whenever they hung - This
was usually 3 times per day or so.

Finally, in July, I got tired of this and I set the parameters as
per the email from linksys support.

Of course, it hung again, so as a last resort, I called linksys
phone support.

I can now say that I have officially spoken with the absolute, most
idiotic tech support person ever.
I explained my situation, and asked him what else I could try.
He had 3 suggestions:

1) try changing the channel

2) try changing the ESSID. I stopped him here. I said, "what the
hell will changing the ESSID do?" He responded that it
will boost the signal...... Oh my God. Attention technical support
people - Try not to blow smoke up my ass like this. Go ahead and
tell me things like "Look, the product is crap - you should upgrade
to the new access point. It will work for you", but don't tell me that
changing the ESSID will boost the fucking signal.

3) try upgrading the firmware. I said, "I'm already running the latest
firmware". He said, "upgrade it anyway - sometimes it fixes things".

Ok, I'm certainly not going to change the ESSID. This is a non-trivial
event because all my clients have it hard-coded, and I'm not going
around to 20 machines and making the change.

But you know what - I will try changing the channel and the re-flashing
the firmware - while I wait for my new Proxim AP-2000s to arrive.