[larac]

Our wireless worked perfectly until Sunday. Now it has trouble connecting and once it gets the connection it drops out all the time. Even though the lights are all home nobody it home. The signal strength is good but it has trouble acquiring the network address and connecting up and maintaining the connection.

We have a pc and 2 macs and have the same trouble with all 3 computers. We have rebooted and turned everything off but it still keeps happening and then occassionally like right now it works for about 5 mins no worries.

Any suggestions?

[ontheroad]

What router are you using? Is it a secure connection?

[PDLM]

You need to narrow down the problem. What happens if you connect a PC directly to the router by wire? If still the same problem then you need to talk to your ISP. If that connection is stable then you may have a new neighbour trying to use the same channel WiFi - try changing your network to a different channel.

[ontheroad]

There's a widget for macs called JWire Wifi Hotspot finder that will tell you what channel all your neighbours are on.

[larac]

We use a Linksys router and it is not secure - we never quite figured that bit our when setting it up.

We have never used a cable before only wireless so maybe I will have to try that and plug in the computer directly and see if it improves.

Thanks On the Road - my suspicion is that interference could be the problem. Sometimes we do see that the router is active when we are not online and do take great delight in unplugging it to upset our neighbours.
I also noticed last night that even though our router was in the wireless list the computer was also trying to connect to another one - maybe one of our neighbours has set up a new one and it is causing problems.

Can you suggest how you change the channel as I have no idea how to do that.

Lastly apologies for the spelling in the first mail. I was going fast before it disconnected again.

[KnowItAll]

Chances are .. someone in the flat next to you has just gone out and purchased one of the newer high powered Pre-N series routers. They tend to disrupt older routers.

Do try the wired route .. that will confirm that the router is ok at the very least.

[ontheroad]

to set the channel on your router go here:

http://192.168.1.1/wireless.htm

you might also want to download the latest driver updates as they fix some of those disconnect problems.

[hk.com]

Since we got the 54Mbits and 108Mbit standard, now we can all go slower than when it was all 11Mbit.

[JohanSWE]

It's a linksys, it probably bricked like they all do.
This always happens to linksys it's just a matter of time...sigh
Throw it in the dumpster where it belongs, and buy another brand :P

[CarterTG]

I'd have to back up Johan on this one... more likely than not if you do a lot of high-bandwidth stuff (torrents, skype) over a period of time, it can eventually kill a wireless router.

Over the past 6-8 years, I've gone through no less than four Linksys routers. The first one bricked completely, holding down the reset button for factory defaults did nothing. The rest became chronically problematic.

When they start going, they exhibit the same problems you describe... constantly dropping its WiFi connection and/or sensing the SSID but never connecting successfully.

I've gone through the same routine.. suspecting the computers, suspecting my ISP, suspecting the cable modem (residence), suspecting the DSL modem (workplace). After a lot of deductive procedures, things started pointing to the wireless routers as the culprit. At $40usd, it saves me a lot of aggravation and time to swap it out rather than diagnosing EVERYTHING. Plus, in every one of the replacements, it WAS the wireless router at fault.

My latest Wireless Routers are Netgear brands. Out of the two, one died after a year... self-resets after every four seconds.. so it's not just Linksys. Being that all these units are typically made-in-you-know-where, I don't have any confidence they'll last too long. A Linksys I setup for an aunt and a Buffalo Wireless G at another location seem to be working OK for the past several years despite heavy wireless Skype usage.

If you haven't previously locked down the router's administration password AND encrypted the signal, it's likely your neighbors have been leeching off (abusing) your broadband and possibly contributing to the router's early demise.

All of the Toshiba notebooks I've come across include a utility called ConfigFree.. one of it's features is a realtime chart showing all the (open and secure) networks the notebook's WiFi antenna has sensed. It displays the SSID names in an orbiting chart where the stronger signals orbit closer. Hovering the mouse over each name reveals the channel it's on. My point is, if this is available in a bundled utility, there should be similar freeware/shareware utilities out there.

If you have a handful of neighboring WiFi signals on the same channel, that wouldn't necessarily dictate frequent dropouts. But as others have said, a neighboring Wireless-N, cordless 2.4ghz telephones and even leaky microwaves will cause problems.

A published book on this subject has recently been made available as a free PDF download:

Wireless Starter Kit