Stefan Lasiewski

I finally got a wireless network. I was waiting for the equipment to come down in price. TigerDirect had some refurbished 802.11b D-Link components for sale. $20 for the router: A D-Link DI-514, $15 for each of the D-Link DWL-520 network cards. So I bought them (still waiting for the refund from D-Link).

I installed the router, installed the DWL-520’s (Which came with the wrong Driver CD!), configured everything and off I go!

For the most part the network works great, but sometimes Windows 2000 will crash into a Blue Screen of Death with this message:

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

*** STOP: 0X000000D1 (0X0191A400,0X00000002,0X00000001,0XF828B908)

*** NETR33X.SYS - Address F828B908 base at F827B000, Datestamp 3ecdaf93

Annoying as heck. Now, note that NETR33X is the driver for many D-Link cards, including the D-Link 520.

These crashes only happen my network has alot of traffic. I’ve been trying to use Bittorrent to download the latest version of Red Hat Fedora Linux, and the crash usually happens when my download speed goes over 150 Kb/s.

Well, while troubleshooting this and downloading Fedora at 150 Kb/s, I received a phone call. We have one of the cheap common Uniden cordless phones. As many of you know, many cordless phones transmit at 2400 Mhz. The 802.11b and 802.11g wireless networks *also* transmit at 2400 Mhz.

So I pick up the phone, listen to the caller, and there is alot of noise. I know that the Uniden and my wireless network transmit on the same frequency range, so I try to change wireless channels on the Uniden phone. I hit the “Channel” button, and at the exact same time, boom — Blue Screen of Death.

It looks like the D-Link cards have trouble dealing with wireless signals from other devices.

After changing channels on the Uniden phone, there have been no crashes at all. My Bittorrent has even reached 170 Kb/s ! Yes.