Okay, here's the hardware first. My roommate and I use a Netgear wireless router and we've got a Motorola cable modem (we subscribe to Road Runner). I can't really tell you any more than that, ie model numbers or anything like that. I could go and look if requested.

Needless to say, my roommate and I are on a wireless network. But my internet periodically cuts itself off. It will normally go for long stretches without incident (maybe 10-12 hours or so?), and then all of a sudden our computers can't detect our network anymore. We can normally solve this by unplugging the router for 30 seconds, plugging it back in, and have our computers reconnect. No problem. Now, as of late, my computer can't even get a goddamn IP number. I'll just be cruisin' on the internet, minding my own business, when suddenly no pages load at all, and I get an error message saying that I can't get an IP address. I can usually fix this, though, by unplugging both the modem and the router.

To make a long story short, though, should I even have to be going through all of this hassle? Is this just a part of doing wireless? It's getting really old, I'm admittedly not a patient man, and I'm so fucking sick of my internet just cutting off on me. although the internet does seem to "freeze up" or something, Staying on AIM impossible because people will send me messages and I never receive them, that is, they'll type in a message and send it and they'll think I've received it, but nothing appears on my screen and so I don't know what was said. I'm having to unplug the router at least twice a day now, and it seems to have to need this at pretty random times. For about a week the internet just wouldn't work at all, which was a huge hassle because I had assignments that needed to be submitted electronically that week.

If somebody can tell me if this is what I should be pretty much expecting, please let me know now so that I can go bitch to my roommate to go and find some damn ethernet lines.

hmm, 0 seems to be having some of the same problems that I'm having, if his thread is any indication.

[Edited on August 4, 2005 at 1:06 AM. Reason : asdf]

8/4/2005 1:00:02 AM

you have your own internet?

8/4/2005 1:11:19 AM

By "my internet" I mean my connection to the internet. I don't have my own connection, we share one via the router.

8/4/2005 1:49:58 AM

Stop using BitTorrent.

8/4/2005 1:51:52 AM

go dialup...

8/4/2005 8:10:54 AM

yeah I would guess you're taxing the router too much. I've never had a problem with wireless for normal use. It's only under high strain that problems occur. I seldom reset my router. Or in short,

Quote :

"Stop using BitTorrent."

8/4/2005 8:25:14 AM

Only one problem, fellas. I DON'T USE BITTORENT. I can't speak for my roommate, though, but I'm pretty sure that neither of us does anything that's particularly taxing on our bandwidth.

In all honesty, though, I think it's our router. I say this because we use to do DSL, and for a while we had that same Netgear router, except that he was connected wirelessly to it and I was just connected to it via an ethernet line. I had the exact same problems that I have now. We did at one point have a Linxus router that we were both connected to via ethernet cable, but there was this strange issue with my roommate's bandwidth being extremely low, he said something about how the cable was probably defective. Point is, when we used the Linxus router, we had almost no trouble at all: no shut-off of service, no connectivity issues, no problems. It worked beautifully (though there was this really strange thing where my netscape email account would never load, but maybe that was a security issue :shrug: ). When we switched to the Netgear router, my internet started shutting itself on and off at will.

We've tried updating the software in the router, but I think this has had only a limited effect, if any at all. I just want to know if there's something else we can try or if there's some issue surrounding wireless that I'm not aware of. And no, please don't tell me to stop using BitTorrent, that's not the problem because I use any mass-downloading programs.

[Edited on August 4, 2005 at 9:49 AM. Reason : blah]

8/4/2005 9:45:59 AM

if your roommate does use bittorrent tell him to make sure he has a client that allows him to cap the number of people he can download from to no more than 240

seems to be taking care of issues regarding router using too much memory

8/4/2005 11:36:54 AM

Microwaves, Walls, 2.4 GHz phones, bluetooth can interrupt the signal. It could be that.

Also, I would check again that you have the most up to date router firmware becuase new ones are released fairly frequently and can help a lot. So look up your model number and update it.

I would make sure your wireless router is set to broadcast the SSID.

One other thing you can try is that after booting your computer and you are connected to the wireless, disable your Wireless Zero Configuration service. Start Menu -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services. Next time you turn your computer off though, you will not connect automatically to the wireless. You will need to go back in and reenable WZC for windows to connect to the wireless network. Then again after you're connected, disable it again. This has worked for some people, but not all. This page could be helpful on this as well http://techbase.msu.edu/viewpathfinder.asp?id=1986

8/4/2005 12:00:43 PM

Personally, I've never had issues with my laptop connecting wirelessly, but I do know people who've had many, many, many issues with Netgear routers, so you may be SOL (i.e. go buy a new router). However, I have had some problems in the past with my Netgear MP101 connecting to and maintaining a connection with the router. What worked for me was:

1) Reserving an IP address. This speeded up connection time A LOT.
2) Trying different channels. This will help with any interference (like Petschska mentioned). Try different channels for awhile until you find one that doesn't seem to drop as often as others. Channel 6 is what I ended up on.

Granted, this was dealing with an MP101, which is a bordline piece of shit. But it can't hurt for you to try.

8/4/2005 12:17:32 PM