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Wireless Networking Hardware

Cooling your Access Point? 96

Posted by Cliff from the WLANs-dislike-heat-ya-know dept.
CmdrChillupa asks: "Summer's here in the US. I don't really mind the heat and I've lived my whole life without AC. Just gotten used to having fresh air instead of pre-processed. There's only one problem with this whole theory. After a long day at work I get home and go to do a little surfing on my PowerBook and my WLAN is down. I have a Siemens Speedstream 2624 Wireless Router that from all appearances dislikes the heat more than I do. I've gotten into a habit of holding it in front of a fan for a few minutes everyday when I get home, I thought the fridge might be a bit too humid for it's electronics. Anybody have any solutions aside from a alum-alloy-peltier-inter-cooled-turbo-charged-9 monstrosity?"
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Cooling your Access Point? More

Cooling your Access Point?

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  • Same as SMC (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ralphb ( 15998 ) * on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @03:24PM (#6342090) Homepage
    I believe that the Siemens Speedstream is hardware equivalent of the SMC AWBR wireless router I have. Siemans runs their own version of firmware on it, and it's supposedly a lot more stable than SMC's firmware. The SMC firmware is so bad, in fact, that I gave up on the SMC as a router because it kept disconnecting my cable modem connection every few hours and required a reboot to reconnect. Not a Hardware problem, they swapped it out for me once. I got myself a Linksys (which runs perfectly) and I'm using the SMC as just a wireless access point. I just disable DHCP and assign it a static IP. Anyway...

    The unit is very heat sensitive. When I first installed it, I had trouble getting a stable connection about 30 feet away through one floor and one wall. So, I set the unit up on styrofoam feet about one inch high and set up a 4" cooling fan to blow across the unit. Big difference! The signal in my kitchen is now five by five. I don't think you need to do any extreme cooling tricks to get the improvement.

    Ralph

    • Re:Same as SMC (Score:1, Informative)

      by NetPoser ( 266960 )
      Wow, my SMC would slow down my DSL connection until I restarted it (at least once per day). My ping times would be 5 times greater until I rebooted the router.

      How does the heat affect the router if rebooting instantly fixes the problem. Wouldn't it need time to cool down?

    • Re:Same as SMC (Score:3, Informative)

      by drlock ( 210002 )
      As the parent post suggests, circulation may be the biggest requirement.

      You don't necessarily need cold air from A/C, you just need to keep the air moving.

      As an extreme example, I saw a monitor overheat and destroy itself once because someone left a few magazines on top of it and covered the vents. It was not a particularly warm day, there was just no circulation.
      • I agree. happend to my brother.
      • A more mundane example: you can make an ordinary PC in an AT-style case overheat by leaving the cover off. The fan in a conventional PC power supply doesn't supply cool air -- the PS itself is a major source of heat -- but just having the air flow properly past the components makes a lot of difference.
        • Reminds me of one of the first 386s that our company got straight from Intel to test (Intel supplied the case AFAIK).

          Well, the system had a RAID card, with lots of pretty lights that were fun to watch. Since we were evaluating the box for production use, we'd leave the case off to watch the lights. Problem was, after an hour or so, the system would become horribly unstable (lots of random and strange errors).

          Turns out, the airflow in the case was designed to pull from the front lower (fullsize tower),
      • I saw a monitor overheat and destroy itself once because someone left a few magazines on top of it and covered the vents. It was not a particularly warm day, there was just no circulation.

        Waaay back when I ran a C64 BBS, one of my 1581 drives started locking up intermittantly (and as per Murphy's law, never when I was around)... even though it was wintertime, I suspected a thermal fault, so I lowered the thermostat in my apartment..

        Amazingly enough, this caused the drive to lock up even more frequently,
    • There's two versions of the SMC 7004AWBR, part numbers 750.5312 and 750.5435. Don't ask me how they differ, just looks like LEDs at the front.

      I have the 750.5312. Have you tried flashing the Siemens firmware onto the SMC?
    • If the hardware is really the same on the two units, then it may be possible to put the Siemens firmware onto the SMC unit. You might want to try looking at both of them side by side in a hex editor to see if there are slight differences between the two to prevent cross-flashing.

      You can do a similar thing with the RioVolt SP-250 MP3 player... you just change the header from an iRiver iMP-250 firmware to match that of the SP-250, and it allows you to use the (better) iRiver firmware on the Rio player.

  • Move to Alaska (Score:2, Funny)

    by PeteyG ( 203921 )
    Move to Alaska, like I did. I live down the street from a glacier, and I let my superpowered gaming laptop heat my room at night.

  • If you need reliable cooling... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mnmn ( 145599 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @03:29PM (#6342140) Homepage

    I read someone had done this for his desktop pc..

    Take a long flat piece of aluminium bar. Bolt one end into the inside of the AP possibly on top of the hottest chips (will need to drill a hole or slot in the side) and the other end of the bar is bolted on a water pipeline or metal structure of the building that runs through the concrete. This makes your router VERY immobile.

    I'm betting youll find an easier way like placing the router in a cooler place, but I just needed to throw in this possibility.
    • Very immobile, yes, but what happens to the chip when you drill a hole thru it to mount said aluminum bar?
    • Yes, a big heat sink is what he needs.

      When you touch metal it tends to feel cool, because it conducts heat well enough that it is moving heat out and away from your skin. Having a thick piece of metal to carry the heat to something big and cool can help.

      Then it's a matter of whether anything big and cool exists nearby. Do your water pipes feel cool? Is your building built of wood or concrete, and does concrete or the floor feel cool?

      Or do you have some steel shelves and do they feel cool?

      I suppose

  • Get airconditioning (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You damn dirty hippy.
  • You could always go with oil cooling [slashdot.org]. Mmmm, mmmm, deep-fried packets.

  • an (obvious) measure (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Put the box in spot that gets no sunlight on the floor. this is in contrast to placing it near the ceiling where heat can gather.

    consider a small fan to blow air over the box to get some ventilation.

    also consider placing the box in your basement. for example: I live in a 3 story 100+ year old row home, no a/c. The floors lower to the ground are consistently cooler then upper floors. so keep this ap on a lower floor, maybe even the basement.
    • The floors lower to the ground are consistently cooler then upper floors. so keep this ap on a lower floor, maybe even the basement.

      Yeah, keeping a wireless access point in the basement of a three-story building is a good idea. Sigh.....
      • Our AP is in the basement, and we get fine WiFi access to the other floors of the house. Though, others have had different experiences, maybe it just depends on the type of wood the house is build with or something.
        • Technically this would be a good idea. Placing a AP at the bottom of a wall and having a computer directly above on the other side of the wall can mean the signal has to travel through more than the height of the wall to reach the computer. (remember a^2+b^2=c^2)

          However, with the AP in the basement and the computers directly above it then the signal needs to only move through the 2-3 feet that each floor of the house is made of. Of course this is assuming everything lines up right.

          • Well, in my house, there are two floors between my sister's room, which is above and to the right ten feet or so from the ap, and then my mom's room is one floor away, but about 20-30 feet horizontally from the ap...

            I walked all over the house, with a laptop measuring the signal, and everything was clear, regardless of the location, granted the signal wasn't perfect, but more than enough.

  • It's easy, you answered it yourself (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    LEAVE THE FAN THERE instead of taking it away. Simple.

  • Anybody have any solutions aside from a alum-alloy-peltier-inter-cooled-turbo-charged-9 monstrosity?

    Buy a linksys. They have an operating temperature of -10C to 55C (14F to 131F).

    • Buying a LinkSys is akin to buying shit.

      Get a D-Link or a Cisco 340 or 350.

      LinkSys isn't getting any more of my $, nor will I pass up a chance to badmouth their crappy products and support.

    • Unfortunately, linksys boxes do get hotter than 131F. They're worse than most, according to the helpful folks at my ISP.

      Easy option 1: buy a fan, and ensure that there's room for airflow. One of those little "desktop fans" will do wonders. That's how I keep my Linksys POS from overheating.

      Easy option 2: Turn off the box when you're not using it. This has the side effect of making the network more secure. :-)

      • Unfortunately, linksys boxes do get hotter than 131F.

        Is that what they're talking about? I figured they meant 131F room temperature...

        Anyway, I run my Linksys 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in my unairconditioned apartment (I have AC in the bedroom, but the Linksys is in the kitchen). It was 95 degrees yesterday. No problems whatsoever.

        Perhaps Linksys isn't the best choice, but I'm sure an access point can be found which can handle the summer heat.

  • Vertical PCB (Score:5, Insightful)

    by redelm ( 54142 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @03:43PM (#6342276) Homepage
    Mount the unit so the circuit board is vertical. This will greatly improve cooling by natural convection.

    Make sure there is enough vent area at the bottom and top of the case as mounted. Drill some if needed.

    • Re:Vertical PCB (Score:4, Interesting)

      by adolf ( 21054 ) <flodadolf@gmail.com> on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @05:28PM (#6343586) Journal
      I'll second that.

      I used to use a nice SMC-branded rackmount 10/100 "switching hub." Fan-cooled, 12 ports, looked and felt solid. Recently, it met its fate: it's internal power supply caught fire (!).

      So, I needed a replacement. And I'm broke. So I found a cheap (less than $30) 8-port 10/100 switch, branded Hawking Technology and made by who-knows-who. It works as well as any other cheap switch, which is to say: just fine for me here at home.

      It ran quite hot while sitting horizontally on a shelf. My newly-discovered fear for warm networking gear told me to fix that.

      So, I hung it vertically from the side of the same shelf, using the wall-mount holes on the back and some cable ties. The 8 RJ45 jacks on the bottom allow plenty of air to go past/through them, which escapes out of the small vent near the top of the unit.

      It's not quite cool to the touch, but the surface of it is now within "just-barely-warm" range. Which I consider quite good enough.

      Passive convection cooling and is underappreciated in the electronics design world by apparently everyone but audio companies and Apple Computer. It wouldn't be hard, at all, to make this thing cool itself acceptably in the horizontal position, but nobody took the time.

      • While I can't stand their software, MS typically does make decent hardware (Intellimouse Explorer anyone?)

        The MN-500 is no exception - Everywhere I saw, it got quite good reviews. So far, my experience is that it is MUCH more stable than my POS Belkin wireless router that started crashing routinely and then died permanently.

        One thing about the MN500 - It stands vertically. I haven't checked it for heat, but that could be one reason it has proven to be more reliable than the Belkin, which always ran quit

  • refrigerator humidity (Score:4, Insightful)

    by menscher ( 597856 ) <menscher+slashdotNO@SPAMuiuc.edu> on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @03:50PM (#6342338) Homepage Journal
    Any reason you think the fridge will be humid? Everyone knows that air-conditioning removes humidity... and a fridge is just a big air conditioner. The hard part will be getting wires into the fridge for power/networking. Also, I'm not sure the wireless will work so well from within a fridge (think of shielding effects).

    • Nope (Score:2, Informative)

      by bitty ( 91794 )
      A typical refrigerator has high humidity. If they kept humidity down, your food would dry out.
      • See, about 30 years ago, they invented these frost-free freezers/fridges. Turns out that if you put stuff in them, they do in fact dry out. If the air in a fridge has high humidity, why aren't the walls covered with condensation? Perhaps you have one of these ancient refrigerators? Parent to your post was correct.

      • Re:Nope (Score:2)

        by GoRK ( 10018 ) *
        Your food does dry out in the fridge. That's why you have to put it inside something. Just set a piece of bread on the shelf in there for a day or so and see what you get.
    • Cold air can hold less water than warm air. So, the air in the fridge will carry less water than the air outside. But once the air in the fridge was outside, and had lots of water. Where does all this water go? It condenses on any available surface.

      You could open your fridge only on very cold and dry days, and keep it airtight...
    • The air coming out of any A/C or fridge cooler will be at close to 100% humidity.

      The A/C ONLY removes EXCESS humidity... e.g. it will remove ALL the humidity that cannot be carried at the current temperature, but it won't necessarily remove more than that, esp. if there is a source of more moisture (wet food, etc.) inside.

      see here [216.239.53.100] for more info.

    • Air conditioners do remove moisture from the air. In every air conditioner I've seen, this results in water dripping out of the air conditioner. I've never, however, seen a working refigerator dripping water out onto the floor. This implies that all the moisture which can't be held by the chilled air must remain inside the fridge. Most likely, this means that moisture will condense on anything you put into the fridge, which is a generally big no-no for most electronics.

  • In the fridge (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tintivilus ( 88810 ) <tintivilus AT tintivilus DOT org> on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @03:51PM (#6342347)

    I thought the fridge might be a bit too humid for it's electronics.

    If it's too humid in the fridge, it's waaay too humid in the heat. Cold air doesn't hold as much moisture as warm air; this is why a lot of people store ground coffee in the fridge or freezer. You can put it in the fridge without any problems, you just need to watch out for condensation when you take it out of its cool, dry place into the warm, moist ambient air.

    On the other hand, your RF performance might suffer by putting your AP in a big metal box :)

    • The relative humidity in the fridge is higher for a given level of moisture, but the real concern with electronics is condensing humidity.

      At a lower temperature (say 35F), it is unlikely that any point on the AP would be cooler than the air temperature, so condensation is not likely.

  • Forced Air Ventillation (Score:4, Funny)

    by pbox ( 146337 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @04:08PM (#6342586) Homepage Journal
    1. take the drill to the top of the case. Make a 60 or 80 mm diameter hole.

    2. Get a cheap 60 or 80 mm computer fan ($3 investment).

    3. Mount with 2 or 4 screws to the top of the case.

    4/a (some geekness, but mobile) Take your multimeter (everyone should have one lying around) and find a 5-12 V power to supply the fan. This should be not that hard for any geek. Look around the power supply. Solder fan wires.

    4/b (less elegant, but no need to know EE) Take an old PC power supply, hardwire the ATX power signal. Connect fan.

    5. Profit. I mean surf.

  • cut a small hole in the enclousure (near or over the hot spot, if it can even be found), big enough for a small ish (think 5-9volt) fan and solder the power leds to the power connection in the AP then attach fan. or dont use a fan and just make some holes to help with the ventelation.

    Thanks if you cant move it to a cooler area.
  • I have a Linksys WAP11, and had a similar problem when I moved the WAP11 to my attic. (The signal strength is much better when it is projecting downared.) I was getting inconsistent signal quality during the day (when the attic is hot).

    I have a Linksys signal amplifier too, and had that originally on top of the WAP11. I separated the two of them, then proppsed each up so there was air flow above and below each unit. Since then, I have had no problems.
  • my alum-alloy-peltier-inter-cooled-turbo-charged-10 does the trick and is actually 0.13% smaller than the alum-alloy-peltier-inter-cooled-turbo-charged-9 model
    • it was actually supposed to read alum-alloy-peltier-inter-cooled-turbo-charged-9-co mputer-controlled-fan-monstrosity. Apparently someone got a little crazy in the editing room and crushed my joke on the new PowerMac g5's

  • remove the cover (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BigBir3d ( 454486 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @05:21PM (#6343515) Journal
    assuming it is in a relatively dust free environment.

    or you could do the dremel thing... but i would use a smaller fan (maybe chipset fan instead of a case fan).
  • I live in Austin, TX. Summers here are particularly hot.

    I bought a dlink 714p (3 ethernet, 1 printer.. this was before they introduced "plus") a year and half ago, with plans of putting it in the attic so that my neighbor and I could share dsl. After a fairly mild (by Texas standards), everything still works like a charm. It is regularly over 130 (fahrenheit) up there.. BYVMV

    You should be able to pick one of these up under $60 now.

    Best of luck!

  • A few options... (Score:3, Informative)

    by stienman ( 51024 ) <adavis&ubasics,com> on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @05:40PM (#6343703) Homepage Journal
    You might find it'll work better via convection air flow if you tilt it so the back is up and the front is down.
    • Mount it or set it on small blocks so air can flow freely around the entire unit.
    • Mount it to the wall.
    • Use a vacuum and clean any dust and debris out.
    • Remove some of the plastic casing over the warmest chip, and mount a tiny fan (such as those sold at radio shack) onto the case, blowing onto the chip
    • Hang it from a string from the cieling or bookshelf
    • Place it on a large aluminum (aluminium, for you other blokes) plate, or block of steel
    • Attach it to the blade of your ceiling fan
    • Go to Radio Shack and get a few aluminum heatsinks and use thermal adhesive to glue them to the tops of the chips (or pcmcia card) that are getting hot
    • RTFM
    • Put it in your neighbor's airconditioned house/apt/condo/cardboard box
    • Learn not to buy cheap
    • Use it in an interactive, wireless art exhibit - "Schrodinger's Net connection: You don't know if it's dead or alive until you open the laptop..."
    -Adam
  • I have never heard of this before with an AP. I have a dlink ap-1000 that doesnt even get to room temperature. Are these AP's really getting that hot or are they designed to operate in temps below 80F? Can someone post actual temps?
    • I jsut replaced an older 713p from dlink that always locked up when there was any kind of volume going over the air, once the pcmcia card even worked its way out (prolly from me hitting the damn thing everytime it locked up) foring me take it apart to reseat and it was decently warm in the housing... The replacement is an Ornioco BG-2000

      I also replaced a older dwl650 pc card with a a Ornioco Gold card and the Gold card with the Old AP got far better reception that the 650 ever did.

      Paying a bit more does p
    • I have a dlink ap-1000 that doesnt even get to room temperature.

      That's pretty impressive. Better turn it off once in a while or you'll cool the earth to absolute zero.

  • like this "bloke"
    http://www.asciimation.co.nz/beer
  • I'm not familiar with the specific unit, but assume it does not have forced convection, or you probably wouldn't be having this problem. Most of these units are rectangular, with one dimension much longer than the other two. Figure out which end is hotter while running laying flat. Open it up and drill a few air holes on each small end. Be careful with drill shavings. If you can get the case completely isolated from the electronics, that's best. Put the hot end down, or either one, if the hotspot is c

  • I have, in one pile on top of my main PC's case, a KVM, ADSL modem, and router, piled on top of each other. The modem and router were generating enough heat to kill the stability of the modem. Simple solution: I took the heatsink from my old, dead PC - standard heatsink from a 633MHz Celeron - and put it, vertically, between the modem and the router. It probably isn't very efficient, but it works.

    crappy webcam photo of it: http://edwards.servehttp.com:969/heatsink.jpg [servehttp.com]

    FYI, the modem is an Alcatel SpeedT

  • Try the Netgear ME-102 (Score:4, Informative)

    by raju1kabir ( 251972 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @07:11PM (#6344520) Homepage

    Not sure whether this will make you feel any better, but I have a Netgear ME-102 access point and it's never had any heat problems.

    I live in Washington DC where the summers get pretty summery. I keep it hanging in an unobscured east-facing window where it gets several hours of direct sunlight per day. It's between the window and the blinds so it also gets the heat reflected back by the blinds. I don't use the A/C in my apartment (prefer the fan), so it's usually about 80 in the shade indoors. The thing's gone through one full summer and what we've had of this one, without a hiccup.

    • I live in Washington DC where the summers get pretty summery.

      Heh, move to Florida. Not only are the summers pretty summery, the winters can be rather summery as well. Not to mention the mosquittos and occasional glowing swamp beasts <ramble type = "mindless OT">(eh, the military was in the habit of storing radioactive material in the area (ironically named Yellowwater before they arrived) Not to mention the daftness of the folks who desided that it would be a good idea to store toxic waste in a pa

      • (eh, the military was in the habit of storing radioactive material in the area (ironically named Yellowwater before they arrived) Not to mention the daftness of the folks who desided that it would be a good idea to store toxic waste in a part of the swamp that floods when there's been more than an inch of rain... but it's nice not having neighbors and the land was cheap)

        What happened to the neighbors? They all die of cancer?
        • What happened to the neighbors? They all die of cancer?

          can't recall ever having neighbors, owning the only 20 acres of firm ground in what is a essentially a seasonal swamp can do that.

          Don't like people hanging around though, they scare/kill the wildlife. can't have people killing foxes, can we
    • Not sure whether this will make you feel any better, but I have a Netgear ME-102 access point and it's never had any heat problems.
      I second that. The ME-102 is a fine piece of equipment for the price. Seriously you shouldn't have to go through hoops just to keep your AP cool. I'd suggest either getting rid of it (and buying an ME-102) or calling up Siemens and asking what gives.
  • it is non-conductive

    and there are people who have done it already to whom you can direct performance and other questions to.

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/16/2023 22 1&mode=thread&tid=193&tid=137
  • I've got the same unit in a closet in my "office."

    The house has AC, but the "office" has at least 4 computers running full time in there, so it stays several degees warmer than the rest of the hosue.

    The closet where the AP lives has the doors closed all of the time, and there's a notebook running in the closet, too. (My webserver.)

    I had some range issues with it until I added the directional antenna. Now I get strong signal everywhere in the house.

    Hmmm. now that I think about it, I wonder what kind of
  • Go to your local over-priced electronic component monopoly and buy yourself a component fan. Cut a small hole in the case and tack a couple beads of solder on to a 6v-12v line and tape or glue the fan to the case.
    I used to have a crap load of components in my entertainent center and the audio processor/Dolby amplifier would always overheat causing my speakers to produce a nice square wave. That is, until I did this. I just sat the fan down on the top since it had convinent air slits anyway.
  • Either that or cool your apartment. It's not just the AP that's suffering from the heat, every component, and especially PSU's and HDD's HATE heat. That's why datacenters are cooled to the point where it's uncomfortable to be in them with short sleves. Btw Cisco makes a rugedized AP, when I worked with the guys at Aironet they had a report of a rudigized AP that was in a NEMA enclosure on the top of a flat tar roof in Saudi Arabia! I doubt your flat gets hotter than that =)
  • Just leave the cover open. Not so esthetic but easy and very often it is enough.

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