Spurious WiFi signal and speed readings
Question
What causes spurious speed and signal strength readings when hanging on to a WiFi connection by the fingernails, please? Just curious.
Background
Whilst away on holiday I was given access to a ASUS 520g wireless access point from a neighbour about fifty clear line of sight metres down the street. Their house is largely wooden in construction, which I assume helps the radio signal propagate, though my holiday house was of 50cm solid stone construction, rendered on the outside, and with just one wooden framed, secondary glazed (15cm air gap) window in the room I used that could help the radio signal.
Using the standard XP Pro "WiFi Status" indicator, during the day the signal was a weak but rock steady 1 bar and the indicated speed between 2.0 and 5.5 Mbps. Perfectly fine for basic browsing, MSN messenger, and MS Exchange Server with only minimal patience needed. As night fell, and TVs and things got switched on and especially when the neighbour switched the chains of Christmas light adorning his house on (an almost perfect grid that had an instant negative effect on the signal), the speed fell to between 1.0 and 2.0 Mbps with signal remaining at 1 bar. Connection remained rock steady. Much later in the night (everyone else in the street in bed and appliances switched off) it rose to a consistent 11 Mbps, still at 1 bar and still rock steady with no disconnections.
Then the snow came and laid a thick blanket on the roof of the neighbour's wooden house, the eaves of which reach down to adult head height and are therefore lower than his upstairs WiFi access point. At this point connection became dire, usually being completely unavailable despite a 1 bar signal still shown and repeated attempts to "Repair" (usually failing at the connection stage, sometimes getting further but failing on IP allocation). When connection suceeded though, it did strange things. Chief amongst these was registering either an untrue 54Mbps speed (but still the usual 1 bar signal) a few seconds before disconnection, or an untrue excellent signal strength likewise a few seconds before disconnection.
Unrelated to my question but for completeness of background, yes I did try different channels (especially 1,6, and 11) and whacking the radio power up to maximum but it didn't help and performance appeared the same.