Constant Wireless Disconnects

[Turaylon Soulshadow]

Reformatted my computer again, reinstalled everything exactly as I did last time. Whenever I try to watch a movie/episode of House off of a website, watch YouTube, load a game/AIM, and sometimes just randomly sitting here it will disconnect from the internet and reconnect itself. WZC has been turned off and did nothing. It's definitely a problem coming from my computer because my sister's laptop works fine, as does the other desktop that is on the same router.

Wireless card- Realtek RTL8187 Wireless 802.11b/g

[Ddrak]

I hate wireless...

[Turaylon Soulshadow]

I hate it, too, but where my bedroom is I can't put it on an actual ethernet cable even with drilling holes in the floors and walls because the router is on the other side of the house, although I get a perfect signal from where I am.

[Ddrak]

HomePlug ftw.

I am seriously never using WiFi again for anything that I'll be using long-term.

Dd

[Freecare Spiritwise]

I am seriously never using WiFi again for anything that I'll be using long-term.

And you'll make all your guest's netbooks, iPods, smartphones, etc. plug into that? You're effectively tethered, the same as you are with ethernet, and you're not taking advantage of the full capabilities of all your devices. Simon says take one giant leap backwards.

Our entire house is exclusively wireless, even my main work computer. I can basically move my office anywhere in the house with a moment's notice. I don't do it a lot, but occasionally there's a compelling reason like construction going on outside my window and I want to work on the other side of the house. And we take full advantage of the mobility with our other devices too, and of course all the visiting devices. I'm running open wireless (yeah I know, it's a lifestyle choice) so you walk into my house, open your laptop and you're surfing the interwebs.

I will be honest and say it was quite a bit of pain to get where we are now, but it was probably much more pain then Tura will need to go through with all this square footage we have (3 floors, > 4k sq. ft. with one router - was dead set against running more than one) and all these devices that had to work (we really wanted to keep everything "G") and keep constant connections.

There's a whole bunch of tricks you can use, and I would say the first place to start is with other non-wifi devices which share the same spectrum like microwaves and cordless phones causing interference. Don't put the router or the receiver anywhere near a microwave, or if you have to you can just move the microwave. Same goes for your telephone base station. Swap out your 2.4 GHz phones for the newer 5.8 GHz (?) models (get the digital dec) if at all possible.

Second, you'll want to move the router and receivers around to get a feel for the best locations for both. Especially important is the location of the router and its antennae. This could take quite a bit of time as it's not usually obvious of the dynamics of the location. Instead of going too much into the physics of it, suffice it to say that radio waves bounce off shit. Moving the router a foot to the left or bumping one of the antennas as much as a millimeter could give your entire location drastically different reception.

Thirdly, you can go with wireless-N, which has greater range (and bandwidth). I didn't want to do that becuase when I did mine, everything was "pre-standards based" and I didn't want to have to redo it all. But now the standard is finally finished.

It works great for us now. I'm using a 10 year old Linksys router deep in the basement that was resurrected with the DD-RT open firmware, running "G" and all our devices get reception anywhere on the property. But again, it took probably a week's worth of experimentation, and before that much head-scratching equating the dropped connections to the phone ringing and re-heating our coffee lol.

[Turaylon Soulshadow]

I get a great signal from where I am. Before I reformatted I never had any issues with it, but every time I have to wipe my computer and redo my wireless stuff on here I end up with this same problem where it randomly disconnects. We haven't gotten anything new in the way of wireless devices. Disabling Wireless Zero fixed it for a night, then it started acting up again.

[Ddrak]

Try looking for different drivers. If Windows ships with drivers, try them rather than the manufacturer's. Or try the other way around. etc.


@Freecare:

I think you missed the point of my statement. I still have WiFi for the whole iPod etc. thing and being tethered to a power point for long-term use is a fact regardless of whether you're using it for your network as well as power or not. Naturally with a laptop you can easily use *both* wired and wireless as you see fit - taking the stability of wired when you're not wandering around and suffering the whims of neighboring apartments blasting 2.4GHz interference when you are roaming. If anything, I'd suggest that by using wired and wireless as appropriate I'm using more of the full capabilities than you are.

I'll use WiFi if I have line-of-sight. Just too much pain in several different houses to bother with anything else for me.

Why did you only go with one router? Setting up 3 would seem like an obvious choice to me? Again, I use homeplug and push the routers wherever I want without worrying about the wiring getting in the way.

DECT phones use 1.9GHz (just FYI), but are awesome. I could never go back to an analog phone.

Dd

[Freecare Spiritwise]

@DD: Yeah, my bad on the digital DECT 6.0. I mixed it up with my last phone which was a 5.8 GHz analog phone which had a shitty call quality. We use the digital DECT now for our home phone and my office phone and we love it. Also, the range is ridiculous.

And for your plug-in toy, /shrug whatever floats your boat I guess. Maybe I'm just not seeing the compelling need versus something like ethernet. I might start augmenting my house with wired gigabit ethernet because all those HD movies are a dog moving over the wifi, and my storage is scattered all over the house and I'd rather put all those bad-boy hard drives in the server room.

And I wanted to keep one router because I'm in the theoretical range of a single router. Also it's less points of configuration / failure / power / heat. Over the last couple years I've cut the number of devices in my office down to a fraction. And when I played around with multiple routers / APs, it was a supreme hassle getting them to play nice together maybe because they were different brands (box of random routers FTL). I didn't want to buy more hardware, though that's always an option. Either way now in the entire house there's only one little trouble spot in our informal dining room which still bugs the wife because she sometimes drinks her coffee there. This spot has a couple issues like being right next to the microwave.

@Tura: WTF? You're reformatting your computer more than once to try to fix it, or are you wiping your computer for different reasons? Clearly that's not working. You want to identify where the fault is and best way to do that is to start factoring things out. You want to either try a different router or a different computer, or maybe a different wifi dongle for the same computer. No sense tracking down the fault in your computer (radio, drivers, windows, etc.) if you have a flaky router.

Also, an interference issue could still be causing your problem. Great signal then someone makes a hot pocket and bam, no connection. It would seem totally random.

[Turaylon Soulshadow]

@DD: Yeah, my bad on the digital DECT 6.0. I mixed it up with my last phone which was a 5.8 GHz analog phone which had a shitty call quality. We use the digital DECT now for our home phone and my office phone and we love it. Also, the range is ridiculous.

And for your plug-in toy, /shrug whatever floats your boat I guess. Maybe I'm just not seeing the compelling need versus something like ethernet. I might start augmenting my house with wired gigabit ethernet because all those HD movies are a dog moving over the wifi, and my storage is scattered all over the house and I'd rather put all those bad-boy hard drives in the server room.

And I wanted to keep one router because I'm in the theoretical range of a single router. Also it's less points of configuration / failure / power / heat. Over the last couple years I've cut the number of devices in my office down to a fraction. And when I played around with multiple routers / APs, it was a supreme hassle getting them to play nice together maybe because they were different brands (box of random routers FTL). I didn't want to buy more hardware, though that's always an option. Either way now in the entire house there's only one little trouble spot in our informal dining room which still bugs the wife because she sometimes drinks her coffee there. This spot has a couple issues like being right next to the microwave.

@Tura: WTF? You're reformatting your computer more than once to try to fix it, or are you wiping your computer for different reasons? Clearly that's not working. You want to identify where the fault is and best way to do that is to start factoring things out. You want to either try a different router or a different computer, or maybe a different wifi dongle for the same computer. No sense tracking down the fault in your computer (radio, drivers, windows, etc.) if you have a flaky router.

Also, an interference issue could still be causing your problem. Great signal then someone makes a hot pocket and bam, no connection. It would seem totally random.

I wiped it once for different reasons recently and haven't done it again. The microwave has never been an issue before for as long as I've had the computer, neither of which has moved from where they are, well unless someone's drunk and slides the microwave cart across the room.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Ok, here's what I would do.

1. First make sure it's not a conflict with a cordless phone.

2. Try the drivers as DD suggested.

3. Try moving your desktop around a couple times. It's possible to have a "weird spot" where you get a good signal but yet still lose connections.

4. Say fuck it and just buy a new $15 USB WiFi dongle or one of those PCI cards with the antenna that comes out the back. They both seem to work about the same for me.

Once I had this exact same problem with my HP laptop. Drove me nuts, and the latest drivers did nothing. Turned out there was a bug in the HP official drivers and after many hours of research had to download some generic driver from Realtek to fix the problem, but that's probably not worth the effort if you can just unplug the one that's giving you grief.

[Ddrak]

And for your plug-in toy, /shrug whatever floats your boat I guess. Maybe I'm just not seeing the compelling need versus something like ethernet. I might start augmenting my house with wired gigabit ethernet because all those HD movies are a dog moving over the wifi, and my storage is scattered all over the house and I'd rather put all those bad-boy hard drives in the server room.

Well, yeah. If you've got the option of dropping cat6 through your walls then my toy is pointless. I've used it when renting and didn't have that option.

Dd

[Embar Angylwrath]

Just an FYI.. there are some very reasonable prices out there for moving CAT-5 (or any other wiring) from room to room. Its amazing what these guys cando now. Just a couple pencil holes in the ceilings/walls and they can drag stuff anywhere. I had it done myself. Had six lines dragged from near my entertainment center, up near a chimney flue, and three of them went over a support beam. Cost... $250. Oh, and they put in the ceiling speakers too.

The guy said they'd drag lines to any room/wall for $150/room. Your mileage may vary.

Anyway.. you don't have to settle for the cable guy drilling through walls and running lines along your carpet line. Hate those fuckers...

[Freecare Spiritwise]

You can buy the cordless drill, ladder, fish tape, crimping tool, cable, cable ends, etc. for around $250, do it yourself and have all the cool stuff left over. I just like having all the tools, and as long as they pay for themselves after 1 or 2 uses then my wife is happy. I still do some of my own automotive work (was actually an ASE certified mechanic years ago before I realized my back hurt every day) like brakes, oil changes, plugs, etc. My new favorite gadget is an automotive code scanner. You plug this thing in to any vehicle made after 1996 and it tells you why your check engine light is on. It's worth it even just to keep your mechanic honest.

So yeah, installing cabling can be a fun project. One of my friends is cabling his new house and hell, even Ari could do it. I'm probably going to just run 2 lines to ease the bottleneck on my network for large media files (some HD movies take up 15GB a piece depending on the compression) and upgrade to wireless N and stay mostly wireless. I get my wife to do the cable ends now because I'm getting old and my eyesight sucks.

I'm not sure what landlords let you do on rentals but I would think as long as it's professional you'd be ok. And if anyone asks, that cable-sized hole in the wall is where I hung my Monet. But the last time I rented, the fastest internet you could get residentially was ISDN. So again I'm out of the loop but there's got to be reasonable landlords out there, and it's really not that invasive to wire up a house if you do it right.

[Taxious]

Just an FYI.. there are some very reasonable prices out there for moving CAT-5 (or any other wiring) from room to room. Its amazing what these guys cando now. Just a couple pencil holes in the ceilings/walls and they can drag stuff anywhere. I had it done myself. Had six lines dragged from near my entertainment center, up near a chimney flue, and three of them went over a support beam. Cost... $250. Oh, and they put in the ceiling speakers too.

Who did you contact to get that done? I'd love some CAT5 in my apartment.

[Erinos Wrysing]

I disagree 100% with the above comments that wireless in general is unstable and doesn't work. I am living proof that wireless works perfectly for at least the last five years. Secondly I may have taken some of the above statements out of context as I became irritated and bored as I scanned through the thread. Thirdly I don't claim to be a wireless guru. I am an average computer user.

I have DSL from AT&T who used to be SBCglobal. I don't use their all in one modem/wireless router combination unit. I use an older DSL modem that cat5's to an aging Dlink wireless router connecting to my main computer via cat5 to an ethernet card via card slot. I also have an onboard motherboard ethernet that requires a driver to function. That was my problem when installing a fresh copy of Windblows. I forgot about the onboard ethernet requiring a driver to function. After going through my motherboard box, I found the CD disk that has the needed drivers for the motherboard. Bingo! Now I show an extra connection icon as the onboard inthernet is working as well as the ethernet card.

The DSL modem and the DLink wireless router run twenty four hours a day and the wireless signal is encrypted to keep out the freeby wireless users.The bottom line is there are a lot of details that can be accidentally forgotten which gives an unnecessarily bad reputation to wireless. My wife's laptop connects to the wireless router on startup. I also have a netbook that connects to the wireless also. A netbook is a pain to use for more than a few minutes but is very good for traveling and remembers all the hotel's wireless services that it has connected to before.

[Kulaf]

The problem I have with wireless stem from the rather shoddy way they set the encryption standards and the fact that AP's can actively try to sabatoge other AP's. We shutdown rogue AP's at work all the time with our Cicsco AP's by declaring them rogues. We honestly don't care if people get offended or not.

[Erinos Wrysing]

The problem I have with wireless stem from the rather shoddy way they set the encryption standards and the fact that AP's can actively try to sabatoge other AP's. We shutdown rogue AP's at work all the time with our Cicsco AP's by declaring them rogues. We honestly don't care if people get offended or not.

I assume "they" means work place company standards for wireless encryption schemes. There is a lot of difference in levels of encryption. I don't use the strongest of encryption schemes but I live on a quiet street that apparently doesn't have any master hackers. The AT&T all in one router/modems in the neighborhood show up as 2wire followed by three number digits and each one having a different set of three number digits to give each one it's own identity. They apparently come from the factory with each having their own encryption.

I access my router like a web page through it's IP number, name and password that I set to make changes, set the encryption and lock in IP addresses for all the local wireless devices like the Tivo cable TV tuner recorder that needs updates, a wireless printer, and wireless laptops. Locking in all the devices to local IPs makes them connect much faster. I have a blue ray player on the big screen that can connect to the internet also, however I think my connection is too slow to stream movies.

This has been a new install of WinXP on an older tower computer. I got the Audigy sound drivers up and running with the Altec Lansing speaker system and it's sounding very good considering the age of this stuff. The speaker wire connectors are color coded but the Audigy card plugins are not coded at all. They are connected correctly now and I was going to get model paint at Walmart to mark the card connectors but no such thing at Walmart due to glue sniffers. Now I have to go to a specialty store to buy model paint! Overall this new install is working very fast and clean.

[Kulaf]

No, "they" in this case is the IEEE standards board that decided how encryption should work in wireless networks. For reference see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wired_Equi ... vacy#Flaws

[Falundir X`Viento]

No, "they" in this case is the IEEE standards board that decided how encryption should work in wireless networks. For reference see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wired_Equi ... vacy#Flaws

Well any network using WEP deserves to be the focus of the next generation of script kiddies. PSK2/TKIP via AES has proven to be functional and secure in enterprise level applications. Your mission critical systems will require a RSID over VPN if using wireless anyway if in a secure environment. In our environment we have a guest and associate wireless, where the guest is a lightly monitored internet pass-through, and associate can access front end web based applications. Internal applications must be accessed via hardwire or VPN.

Currently I think the largest threat to a network are the administrators themselves. Most of them don't know enough to configure the network to ensure that wireless remains encrypted during the entire session, and only utilize encryption for the handshake. MAC Address Spoofing then becomes very easy.

Ultimately, wireless is a very powerful tool when utilized correctly. However, I do subscribe to Dd's way of thinking of being wired when at all possible for 'resident' connections.