wireless card flipping between "associated" and "no carrier"

[gabi]

I have a wireless printer that used to be connected to the router with an Ethernet cable. Last week I had to move things around the house a bit, and had to turn that printer into a true wireless one, because the router and modem had to go somewhere else.

As a result, the PC-BSD box went nuts. Its ral0 device (an external Belkin wi-fi card) is flipping between "associated" and "no carrier" every few seconds, which renders it useless for either printing or web-surfing. I'm not sure why it's doing that.

My Win XP laptops had to be set up to print via TCP/IP and they took it from there; everything else worked as before. The Ubuntu machine didn't even need that; it prints as if nothing had changed. Only the PC-BSD machine is acting up. Has anybody seen this on/off wifi behavior before? Is there a cure?

Thank you,

Gabi

[Solarin]

Sounds to me like there isn't a sufficiently strong wireless signal reaching your PC-BSD machine.

You only mentioned your printer, was the PC-BSD machine previously wired or wireless?

You're probably seeing interference due to so many devices within close proximity utilising the same part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

[gabi]

I'm afraid you're right. The PC-BSD machine is a laptop computer that is normally wireless, connecting with an external PCMCIA 8002.11g card.

I had to move the router and the modem to the basement and now the signal in the house is a good bit weaker. I hoped that since it was strong enough for the printer and the other two computers it would be adequate for this one too, but I was wrong. I'm in the basement with the PC-BSD computer and my wifi now works.

Thank you,

Gabi