Question about Noise/Interference

[Zach Chambers]

This is probably the wrong forum for this question, however, some of 
this may or may not be specific to the hostap driver.  I have a few 
access points running hostap-0.0.3 which have been running great for 
nearly a year. I'm graphing the signal and silence levels of each access 
point. Lately  I seem to be receiving interference from external 
sources.  The interference incidents seem to fall into two categories:

1) Elevated noise (silence- as reported by the hostap driver in 
/proc/net/hostap/wlan0/macaddress) levels reaching up to 35 on whatever 
scale is used there.  (I'm guessing around 166.)  For this type of 
incident there is no change in the signal level reported (it usually 
hovers around 111.)  During this type of incident there is no apparent 
affect on the connectivity.  The following observations have been made 
during the incidents:
    * No additional 802.11b devices have been detected on or near the 
same channel.
    * No additional 802.11b devices have been detected at all.
    * The noise does seem to be limited to one channel.

2) Elevated noise (silence- as reported by the hostap driver in 
/proc/net/hostap/wlan0/macaddress) levels reaching up to 35 on whatever 
scale is used there.  (I'm guessing around 166.) For this type of 
incident there is a proportional gain in the reported signal level. 
 During this type of incident there is severe packet loss on the 
connection, and the hostap driver attempts to lower the connection rate. 
 The following observations have been made during the incidents.
    * No additional 802.11b devices have been detected on or near the 
same channel.
    * No additional 802.11b devices have been detected at all.
    * The noise does seem to be limited to one channel.

I would like to begin documenting this type of interference and possible 
work-arounds.  If anyone is willing to comment on this, or can suggest a 
better forum, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

-Zach.