What does it mean on a wireless network when you have 3 or 4 bars, but little to no connectivity?

Question

This is the first environment I work in where there are lots of bars, say, 3 out 5, and 54 Mbps showing on the wireless network, but no connection! Just slow as molasses. Thanks so much!

Answer 1

Connectivity and signals are two radically different things; whilst the signal strength is linked to the wireless link itself, connectivity is due to the IP/network protocols in place.

To give you a perfectly good example, if you had a very strong wireless hub but nothing connected to it, you simply would get 0 connectivity (Limited connectivity), because, whilst the link would be done, you would not get an IP address, netmask and gateway. As such, you'd be dead when it comes to communicating with other devices.

I hope I made it clear that connectivity is wireless-independent ;)

Stuff that could "show" 0 connectivity:

- Restricted subnet (I use that a lot together with software for wireless auth. Beats MAC control/WEP/WPA)

- No DHCP on network

- Poor client/server authentication (laggy server)

Answer 2

The most common reason for this kind of issue is the wrong password for the wireless account. Double check to make sure that you have the right password provided for the connection.

Answer 3

With so many bars, why work!!!  But it looks like a wrong password, reset your security settings on your client.

Answer 4

I preferably hate those bars on most wireless clients ,, it's best to use a dedicated signal measuring application which u can most likely google for,, (it's googleable); there can be many reasons why the bars don't match ur signal,, maybe caches or buffers are in lock or wait state and haven't updated the actual image, sometimes the updating of the graph are just plain slow,, sometimes it doesn't even make any sense what the graph is saying,, i've seen myself being connected to a network and the graph with a X implementing im disconnected,, best bet i guess is to close the app completely, do some system maintenance,,, ccleaner type, and restart the app after a reboot with some clear caches and removal of junk, this MAY help,, other than this, u may want to speak to the networking department about testing the wireless network if this is something employees depend on =)