Does anyone know what a scaling command is?

Hello all,

I work at a hotel and we have wireless internet which I used to be able to connect to with no problem, but a little while after I installed Leopard on my macbook it starting getting all weird. It says I'm connected to the network, but it's only with two bars or even none at all, even though my coworkers compaq has full bar strength and she is sitting right next to me! I called up the tech support for the internet and they tried to get me to do a scaling command through the terminal, but it would work for some reason. Here are the two scaling commands that I'm supposed to type in:

sudo sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.rfc1323=0
and then
sudo echo "net.inet.tcp.rfc1323=0" > /etc/sysctl.conf

after that it just says that I need to reboot my computer and all should be fine. Of course, that didn't happen. Strangely enough, when I tried this command it says that I am not the administrator or something to that extent. However, there is no other account on my computer when I looked at accounts in system preferences. I bought my macbook off of ebay, but the seller reset the hardrive and I installed Leopard once I got it. Thanks for any help or advice.

rfc 1323 deals with TCP window scaling, it allows the receive window to be set above it's maximum value. Basically it has to do with the amount of bandwidth available today vs when TCP was defined. The problem is that scaling does not work on some equipment. We didn't have problems with it before because while implemented in previous OS's (I know XP and 2000 for certain and I believe earlier OS X variants) it was an option. With later linux, OS X, bsd versions and Vista it's now a default.

It can cause significant connection problems if left enabled with incompatible hardware, which is probably why they had you disable it (set it to 0).

Now, regarding your account not being an administrator that may be the case. Open terminal and type

id

then post the results please.

Is it possible to know more about level of wireless signal being dependent on the TCP/IP window? Aren't they two different layers of the networking stack, not even contiguous.

Not sure I follow what the tech was thinking, the symptoms are normally things like time outs, slow response, general connectivity problems. But if you can not issue a sudo command there is a larger issue which needs to be addressed before any further problem determination can really be performed.

thanks for the help. I went into the terminal and typed in "id" and here's what it shows:

Macintosh-2:~ natew66879$ id
uid=501(natew66879) gid=501(natew66879) groups=501(natew66879),98(_lpadmin),81(_appserveradm),79(_appserverusr),80(admin)

my user id is "natew66879" but I'm not sure how to interpret what came up.