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Tim Skutt writes: > Speaking of home routers, occasionally my linksys router (not wireless) > goes into a state where the red diag light is on and I have to unplug > it. I never had to do that before. The only difference now is that I > don't have it plugged into a Monster Power Home Theater power strip > since I moved the TV. It doesn't do it as much now either since > Consumers fixed the loose Neutral I discovered I had at my house, but it > does still do it. > > Those Monster Power Home Theater power strips, while they have the hefty > price tag, actually filter the power. It gets rid of various > interference and filters the electrical power. A UPS would also filter > the electrical power. > > I was amazed at the amount of hum I would get when I would plug in the > VCR to my capture card on the computer. I'd also get video interference > with small bright strips moving slowly through the video. I could also > get rid of all of this hum, and video lines by eliminating the ground on > the equipment with one of those 2 prong adapters, but that is the wrong > and unsafe way to do that. > > As for laser printers, we have actually fixed some of the strange > problems we had with them by simply plugging them into the outlet > directly, and not with a surge surpressor/power strip. I can imagine > that even the newer ones still do a big power draw, especially > considering how hot the fusers get. > > All in all I wouldn't doubt that interference in the electrical power > would cause any of these Wireless problems, based on the problems that I > have had. Boy, if you still have that much hum, and bypassing standard grounding makes that much difference, I'd suggest that you take another look at the ground wiring in your house. If you have a voltmeter, check the potential difference between ground and neutral on one of the outlets in the vicinity of the computer or the VCR (check one on each circuit, if you have more than one in that vicinity). Neutral is the wider of the two slots on a standard outlet. The difference shouldn't be more than 1-2 volts AC - anything much higher indicates that your grounds and neutral aren't properly tied together somewhere in your electrical system. They should all come back to a common neutral bar in your circuit breaker box, and that should tie both to the ground rod and the Consumers neutral wire. You may also want to test the difference between the outside conductor of your cable service, and the electrical ground. That should also be less than a couple volts AC. If you really did have a loose neutral wire in the past, you would have set yourself up for some possibly large voltage spikes throughout your house. What normally happens is that the incoming 220 volt power is split half and half, from the neutral wire to each "hot" wire, giving you the 110 volts that most equipment expects. Half of your 110 volt circuits are tied to one "hot" wire, and the rest to the other. Without the neutral, you end up balancing the load on the one half of the circuits against the other half, and if the loads are uneven, the voltage level on the side with heavy draw goes way down, and the voltage on the other side could go way above 110. You would see that especially in incandescent light bulbs as a significant dimming or brightening of the bulbs when you use a high-current appliance (e.g. toaster, microwave, or laser printer). If all of this fits the past or current symptoms, you may have partially fried your Linksys router. Once you have cleaned up the electrical system, you may want to replace the router. Speaking of the laser printers, you may still want to plug them into a surge suppressor, but not the same one into which you plug your computer, TV, etc. Doug Doug Nelson, Network Manager | [log in to unmask] Academic Computing and Network Services | Ph: (517) 353-2980 Michigan State University | http://www.msu.edu/~nelson/