Techie Wireless Network question
 

Okay.. so I finally broke down and bought a Linksys wireless access point so my kids could mess with the laptop and not have to sit in my office. Got it working alright, but noticing problems that I'm attributing to Comcast, but I'm not sure..

I have an RCA broadband cable modem. Hooked to that is a Linksys cable/dsl router with a 4-port switch. Both those together have worked fine for months and months with at least 2 PCs/laptops hooked up.

The Linksys WAP is connected to one of the ports on the router.

We started out experiencing sporadic disconnects (kids playing on battle.net) on the laptop and at the same time I'd not be able to connect on to the Net. Each time it recovers in 3 to 4 minutes. Sometimes it happens every 15 minutes or so.

During one such time I had been online with Comcast support chat. The guy couldn't ping the modem when I disappeared. (All lights look normal on the modem when it does this).

I turned everything off for 5 minutes and turned everything back on in sequence. Now instead of disconnects the speeds would go to hell. Moved the laptop back into the office, disabled the wireless and reconnected the regular LAN cable and it works fine.

Any ideas? I have comcast coming out on Wednesday, but I know they are going to tell me they won't touch a home network and that their connectivity is fine.

A friend of mine had that same problem. They weren't able to figure it out either.

thanks for the link on PK :thumbsup about the question i dont know. give linksys a call :)

Linksys told me to recycle everything by turning it all off and then back on again.

Keep your kit away from your massive Pioneer speakers. If you have them.

also you could try your isp, they have asked me if i was connected to a router when i was calling about something else. i am sure they may be of some technical advice.

Nope.. no big speakers near any of this. A couple of small and I mean small Sony desktop ones, but that's it.

ISP is Comcast (was attbi). All they could do is say they'd send someone out to check connectivity and that if I wanted them to check to the PC I had to unhook the router and drop shields.

shit i have no idea then. sorry :helpme

Try moving the linksys wap as far from your cablemodem and cable wire as you can. across the room would be best i think. You may be getting some sort of cross-talk.

pk, go grab the http://www.boingo.com client. It will make it easy to scan for other networks..

When I set up Esa's wireless router, we had the same problem.. it turns out there was 3 Linksys wireless routers with the same default config in the same immediate area. And the other 2 both had default admin passwords..

I bet it's one of your neighbors that's screwing yours up. You could also try unplugging your own router (leave unplugged)... then try to connect with the laptop to see if your neighbors have any open access points.

I put ours on a different channel, setup the encryption and it works fine now. Plus we have a backup wireless connection!! ;)

Just make sure you encrypt your shit and don't allow anyone on the same network.

We have had a similar problem with a Linksys router. We ended up not using the DHCP setting, and entered static ip's on all our machines and haven't had the problem since.

PK, I had the same problem you had when I was setting a wireless network up for my friend, and it took me a little while to figure out - but I ended up setting the router on a different channel (as KC suggested above) and it worked fine.. There could be a number of things including your phone that is on the same channel that disrupts the signal, so that's prolly it

Good luck!

What kind of PC card are you using?

I reccommend the ornico silver card

i never had the kind of problems you mentioned,

except when i am on my cordless telephone (2.4 ghz) but i just change the telephone channel and it comes back up

Aliens tryin' to reach ya.

Do you think it's a signal strength issue? If so, I read you can dramatically boost the range on these things with just some tin foil... do a google search if you're interested in all that -- it's pretty cool stuff, I'm not joking either :)

Is the best best advice. Give all the machines a static ip number. Make sure you have enough ip numbers. Normally they give you 2. So you might need more ipnumbers. Problem is not in the modem but in the switch/router with the ip nums.

Good advice. If this does not work email em and I will call you and help. We owe you for so many listings over the years.

lee at dreamnet.com

Is this by chance the RCA modem that stands up?

If so, it could be the modem. I had this problem with my cable RCA modem (and older stand up version), which caused the same issue that your speaking of. Annoying as all hell.

I was told that the older cable modems aren't configured correctly to run some of the newer cable feeds. I unfortunately don't remember the explanation that was given to me. But if you had the modem for some time, i would have them replace it for sure.

I had the same setup. Cable running through a linksys wireless 4 port router when all this happend and i tested everything i could. I never thought it was the modem, until i was told about issue above with the new cable feeds.

Since the cable company is coming out, make them the replace the modem...i mean it can't hurt and they'll do it upon request. If all else fails, hey..at least you know it's not the modem.

In the end, after I replaced my modem, i haven't had the problem since.

If there are any others nearby I don't think it's detecting them. I've had the laptop for a few weeks and the WAP for only a couple of days. The laptop never detected a wireless around here until I plugged in the WAP..

Had it hooked back up the regular way in my office since last night and the problem disappeared.

The Boingo site doesn't mention my wireless card, Dell Truemobile 1300.

Just making up your own static IPs for each machine in the TCP/IP properties rather than setting it to obtain it automatically?

I assume the IPs would be along the lines of what the router assigns with the same default gateway, etc?

This one is flat, like the Linksys router is. I got it last September.

This card came with the laptop.. it's a Dell Truemobile 1300.

Could it be congestion on the 2.4Ghz frequency?

Never had problems with my cordless phone at all. This isn't happening only when the phone is in use either.

When it happens, connectivity is lost to both the laptop and my wired PC.

PK, I had a bit of a problem when I set my Linksys up to. Luckily I got it fiqured out after a few hours. A friend of mine had this same problem, his wireless card was a different make from his linksys router, so he took the card back and bought a linksys card and hasn't had any problems since.

It's your cordless phone, unplug it from the wall (power) and try it for a day and see if it's that

your ips for all the machines using the wireless router would be something like 192.168.?.?

in the settings for the router it will tell you what the subnet and gateway need to be set too. This has fixed out problems so far. It would disconnect us from playing Counter-Strike all the time. And hasn't now that we switched to static ip.

My router is wired.. it's only the WAP that's wireless.