Advanced Wireless Settings Tab

Wireless-G ADSL Gateway

Advanced Wireless

On this screen you can access the Advanced Wireless features, including Authentication Type, Basic Data Rates, Control Tx Rates, Beacon Interval, DTIM Interval, RTS Threshold, and Fragmentation Threshold.

•Authentication Type. The default is set to Auto (default), which allows either Open System or Shared Key authentication to be used. For Open System authentication, the sender and the recipient do not use a WEP key for authentication but can use WEP for data encryption. If you want to allow on Open System authentication, then select Open System. For Shared Key authentication, the sender and recipient use a WEP key for both authentication and data encryption. If you want to use only Shared Key authentication, then select Shared Key. It is recommended that this option be left in the default (Auto) mode, because some clients cannot be configured for Shared Key.

•Control Tx Rates. The default transmission rate is Auto. The range is from 1 to 54Mbps. The rate of data transmission should be set depending on the speed of your wireless network. You can select from a range of transmission speeds, or keep the default setting, Auto, to have the Gateway automatically use the fastest possible data rate and enable the Auto-Fallback feature. Auto-Fallback will negotiate the best possible connection speed between the Gateway and a wireless client.

•Beacon Interval. The default value is 100. Enter a value between 1 and 65,535 milliseconds. The Beacon Interval value indicates the frequency interval of the beacon. A beacon is a packet broadcast by the Gateway to synchronize the wireless network.

•DTIM Interval. The default value is 3. This value, between 1 and 255, indicates the interval of the Delivery Traffic Indication Message (DTIM). A DTIM field is a countdown field informing clients of the next window for listening to broadcast and multicast messages. When the Gateway has buffered broadcast or multicast messages for associated clients, it sends the next DTIM with a DTIM Interval value. Its clients hear the beacons and awaken to receive the broadcast and multicast messages.

•Fragmentation Threshold. This value should remain at its default setting of 2346. The range is 256-2346 bytes. It specifies the maximum size for a packet before data is fragmented into multiple packets. If you experience a high packet error rate, you may slightly increase the Fragmentation Threshold. Setting the Fragmentation Threshold too low may result in poor network performance. Only minor modifications of this value are recommended.

•RTS Threshold. This value should remain at its default setting of 2347. The range is 0-2347 bytes. If you encounter inconsistent data flow, only minor modifications are recommended. If a network packet is smaller than the preset RTS threshold size, the RTS/CTS mechanism will not be enabled. The Gateway sends Request to Send (RTS) frames to a particular receiving station and negotiates the sending of a data frame. After

Chapter 5: Configuring the Gateway

Figure 5-20: Advanced Wireless Settings

The Wireless Tab