# Tenda W311P



## DaneBrooke (Jan 21, 2008)

Hi all - hope someone knows about this card. Installed and loaded driver fine; device manager says all is well. Using the supplied s/w I chose my wireless network, provided my password and it connected. Sort of. It reports "Link is Up" for 2 seconds followed by "Link is Down", ad infinitum. Not surprisingly, I can't connect to the internet. Just about anything I do (like ipconfig /renew) results in the card disconnecting from the network. Second, I should be able to create a "profile" so that anytime I want to connect to my network, it already knows the password. No luck with that, and (a) tech support phone number is now an answering machine and (b) tech support email (if I ever get a reply) goes to China. These cards are cheap, so maybe the answer is "buy a better card". Open to any suggestions, but just for the techie joy of it all prefer to get this to work. TY - D


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## 2xg (Aug 5, 2009)

Welcome to TSF,

Before you replace your Wi-Fi card lets see what's really goin' on. :grin:

Have you downloaded the latest driver from the Manufacturer's site (Tenda)?
Please post a screen capture of Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector. See guide here.


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## DaneBrooke (Jan 21, 2008)

Well, this is interesting (frustrating, but interesting.) Sometime between day 2 and 4 of the card doing the "Link Up"/"Link Down" thing, the connection stabilized, and I was able to connect to the internet. But your advice about updating the driver was so sensible that I did it. I am a lot worse off. Not only do I no longer have connectivity, the software won't even load. "Procedure entry point GetAdaptersAddress could not be located in iphlpapi.dll" and "Load dll fail RawLAPI.dll". And the Xirrus Wi-Fi inspector "encountered a problem and needs to close", before it really loaded even.


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## DaneBrooke (Jan 21, 2008)

I uninstalled everything and reloaded fresh from the CD; It does eventually connect (again), but it takes literally hours for the connection to stabilize and allow me internet access. Xirrus still toast.


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## 2xg (Aug 5, 2009)

What's the distance of your computer from the router? Is your wired connection working well?


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## DaneBrooke (Jan 21, 2008)

All my hard connections are fine. Distance is about 25'. But the same is true of this laptop I am using just this moment. Its only 4' from the tower with the new Tenda card. Distance certainly could be an issue (it came with a 2dBi antenna, and I can get a 5dBi for a dollar or so), but consider the strange aspects: it connects eventually, so why it doesn't do right away is odd. The newest mfr supplied s/w is clearly buggy, and Xirrus objects so strongly to something on my machine that it won't even load. My suspicion is that the card is borderline and my best bet would be to dump it. Tenda hasn't replied to my inquiry, and that is a full 5 days ago.


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## DaneBrooke (Jan 21, 2008)

Here is more. My laptop ipconfig reports ip 192.168.1.2 with subnet mask 255.255.255.0. The machine with the Tenda card, while it was connecting to the internet (that stopped about 5 hrs ago) had values 192.168.1.8 and 255.255.255.0. At this time ipconfig returns 169.254.203.194 and 255.255.0.0; all my hard connections have ips 192.168.1.x -- I don't appear to have anyway to change the ipaddr for the Tenda card, but I am pretty sure that ip addr is bogus


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## 2xg (Aug 5, 2009)

If the new driver caused more issue to you, you may do a 'roll back driver' from Device Manager.

Another suggestion is...change your wireless channel or /and change the wireless security. Channel 1, 6 or 11 are all good Channel. You may change your network security to WPA or WPA2, try not to use WEP as this is equivalent to a NO security. Wish we can see the Xirrus snip. :ermm:

How many wired and wireless network devices are there in your network sharing the bandwidth? What is your subscribed bandwidth from your ISP?


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## DaneBrooke (Jan 21, 2008)

It will be a day or so before I can contact my ISP (work sched) to assk about subscribed bandwidth. I don't typically have more than 2 devices connected *and in use* at any given time; there are 2 wired and 2 wireless connections (3 with the Tenda machine). Channel assignment appears to be determined by the router. I don't seem to be able to tell which channels are used by my original (working) wireless devices, and the Tenda utility reports using channel 2. Rollback moot after uninstall/reinstall. Changing security config means reconfig all devices, and as I recall I went WPA with the router originally because I couldn't get WEP to work. Back to the Tenda machine: I had (a) a period of unstable connection with no internet access during which ipconfig reported IP 169.254.213.1 (b) a period of stable connection with internet access during which ipconfig reported 192.168.1.8 (c) a disconnect followed by reconnect with instability and IP 169.254.203.194 (d - now) a stable connection with IP 169.254.203.194 but no internet access. Back to this laptop I am using. Its IP is 192.168.1.2. I can ping the router (192.168.1.1), which I can't do with the Tenda machine. (Just as you may know what my bandwidth is if I tell you my ISP is Comcast)


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## 2xg (Aug 5, 2009)

Please use speedtest from two of the working computers - wired and wireless.


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## DaneBrooke (Jan 21, 2008)

I greatly appreciate the help and all your time (but this will be my last post for about 12 hrs) Wireless 75ms ping, download 5.12 Mb/s, upload 2.62 Mb/s; wired 75ms, 5.24 Mb/s and 2.65 Mb/s


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## 2xg (Aug 5, 2009)

Thanks for the speedtest results, 5mbps is your bandwidth with Comcast.

Next time that you can come back and post, do another test - restart your computer continue tapping F8 and select Safe Mode with Networking. See how your wireless connection is.

If you can really try to get the Xirrus capture posted it will be great.

Also, please let us know what type of Security or AV software you're using.


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## DaneBrooke (Jan 21, 2008)

I am proud to say I use Avast! antivirus. I can also report that I pulled the Tenda card, inserted a NetGear card, had my internet access up in 12 minutes (as IP 192.168.1.11). Something tells me that this is going to be stable. I don't want to bash Tenda; probably I had the one dicey card in a million... but they still haven't answered my tech support e-mail... just sayin.


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## 2xg (Aug 5, 2009)

I would hate to suggest this, but let's give it a try and remove Avast by using the uninstall utility tool, you may always re-install Avast back later on. AV and Security software can be troublesome, but not always.


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## DaneBrooke (Jan 21, 2008)

No, I don't think removing Avast! is necessary; The NetGear card seems to be doing the trick.


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## 2xg (Aug 5, 2009)

Alright, good enough! Please keep an eye out, come back and update us after 2 days? :wink:


DaneBrooke said:


> No, I don't think removing Avast! is necessary; The NetGear card seems to be doing the trick.


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