What is Signal Strength Bar on Lower Right Hand Side of Window Indicating

Nick

Odd question here after all these years. I have a 6500 and I'm running the latest version of SmartSDR (v2.9.2). I have always run the radio through my wireless internet router but had a hardwire connection with my PC. So essentially, the radio has been plugged into the PC. The strength bar is always full scale and green.

I loaded SmartSDR onto my laptop computer a few days ago and noticed the SmartSDR bar indicates little to almost no signal strength and the output is choppy. I moved my laptop close enough to the wireless router that they were almost touching and the bad reading persisted.

The internet connection on LT itself always indicates full scale strength and an internet test shows I'm getting the full speed I'm paying for.

What is the SmartSDR indicator actually measuring and where would I start looking for the problem? I'd like to know what is being measured and where before start trying to trace down the problem.

This is one of those things that I just tried because I was board one afternoon and now it has become a challenge to make it work. Guess it goes with the hobby!

73s, Ke5qy

Erika - KØDD

Its green

Trucker

It indicates the quality of your network connection. If it's green as Erika stated, you have a good connection. You can hover your mouse pointer over the bars or click on it and it will pop-up a box with detailed information about your network connection.

James

WD5GWY

Al K0VM

It is a crude indication of your averaged end-to-end network quality. It does not directly indicate wifi signal strength. A short burst of errors will cause it to drop to yellow or red and slowly return to green.

A right click in the network pop-up allows you to reset the dropped packet counter. I typically see 1-2 dropped packets per million after initial startup.

AL, K0VM

Nick

Thanks for replies, I have full signal strength on the Wi-Fi indicator and speed tests indicate I'm getting 143 MPS with 17.5 ping and 27.3 jitter. My speed test site doesn't give the retry rate. I have no problem with watching videos or running could based programs with this LT so slowdown has to be somewhere in the drivers. Problem persists setting next to the router, so it is defiantly not the network.

Odd thing is that it sometimes turns full strength green for a second or two and them drops back down again to yellow or red. Don't you hate intermittent problems?

Maybe it is because I'm running Windows 11? Next test is to connect LT directly to router with cable and see if that makes any difference.

73s. Nick

John KB4DU

The speed test over the net have little relationship to the data flowing from the flex to the pc. The flex is supplying real-time data, which is very different from the buffered data from online sources. Video can have dropped frames that will never be noticed by the viewer, but the same lost data packets will be noticed in the realtime data flow from the flex. The performance of switches/routers is very different in handling real time data. I removed a 1 gig switch and replaced it with a 100 mb router used as a switch, with much improved network performance for the flex. Mike has made the same observation here on the forum. Start with the simplest setup. Wire the pc directly to the flex, no switch/router to determine the performance of the pc, then go from there. The network quality indicator on SmartSDR should be all green shortly after startup.