NotebookForums.com › Forums › Notebook Manufacturers › Dell Notebook Forums › Dell Legacy (single-core notebooks) › Linksys Wifi Connection & Dell Wifi Dropping
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Linksys Wifi Connection & Dell Wifi Dropping

post #1 of 13
2/2/05 at 1:36pm
Thread Starter 
I seem to be having a rather odd problem going on. I have an XPS laptop with the builtin wifi. Im running XP Pro Sp2. Signal and speed are just fine. However, in the evenings (mostly) the wifi connection will just "drop". It's as though the linksys router is no longer there and active. A restart of the machine, an unplug and plug in of the router does nothing. It will remain this way for up to 15/45 minutes. Then all of a sudden, it will work perfectly again until next evening. Sometimes it won't happen for a couple of days.

I am using wep and have tried numerous things. I have changed the channel that wifi is using, I have disabled web and a few other things. Still the problem persists. I have to fall back to a hardwire connect now. It's really annoying.

Any suggestions? Linksys support is a joke and that's being nice. I really don't feel like talking to dell as I don't think it's there issue.


Any help would be appreciated.
Reply
Reply
post #2 of 13
2/2/05 at 2:01pm
I would head over to the forums at DSLreports and post there. http://www.dslreports.com/forum/linksys

This is a hardware specific forum for Linksys networking hardware, and is a very good place to find specific support. These guys tweak the heck out of these routers, and they know them inside-out. :0)
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 13
2/2/05 at 11:56pm
Heh, This may not be funny to you but I am thinking that the obvious answer is that your neighbors have 2.4ghz phones. The reason it cuts out in the evening is for the obvious reason.. people enjoy talking on the phone in the evening. This may require some more serious tweaking, I have the same problem where I cannot get the wireless to startup for the life of me, and then I realize that my mother is on the phone.
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 13
2/3/05 at 8:48am
Quote:
Originally Posted by thomaszak
Heh, This may not be funny to you but I am thinking that the obvious answer is that your neighbors have 2.4ghz phones. The reason it cuts out in the evening is for the obvious reason.. people enjoy talking on the phone in the evening. This may require some more serious tweaking, I have the same problem where I cannot get the wireless to startup for the life of me, and then I realize that my mother is on the phone.
Sounds like you ought to buy your Mom a present...upgrade her to a 5.8GHz cordless phone!
Reply
Reply
post #5 of 13
2/3/05 at 11:30am
Make sure your routeur is on the channel 6 or 7 this will reduce interference with wireless phones.

Upgrade your router firmware if you have not already done it.

In my case I have my office laptop and my XPS to find out if I have the problem on both. So if you can have more then one wireless device on your routeur and see if both have the same problem.
Reply
Reply
post #6 of 13
2/3/05 at 2:09pm
I have a Netgear wireless router and the same thing happens to me once in a while. Laptop says it is connected, but I can't access email or internet. I had this problem on my laptop before I ever dreamed of buying my i9100, so it's not the laptop. Once I get dropped all I have to do unplug the router for two seconds, then plug it back in. Within a minute the laptop will be reconnected.

I've spent countless hours troubleshooting the thing, and I've just given up: unplugging/plugging is easiest for me.
Reply
Reply
post #7 of 13
2/3/05 at 4:57pm
Thread Starter 
Yeah. Its a really odd occurance. I have my laptop and a desktop that both run wifi. The desktop uses a PCI linksys wifi card and the laptop has whatever the dell one is. Both will cut out at the same time. The wifi network (my wireless network) will disappear completely. A normal unplug and plug in does nothing. I have to wait for it to come back (where ever the heck it went). However, in that time I usually just hard wire the connection and bingo bango im back online. So its not the router itself persay. Its something with the wifi. I will see about updating the firmware if there is any and go from there.

I would use the wifi as my only connect, but it's so darn buggy. I have tried every channel btw.
Reply
Reply
post #8 of 13
2/3/05 at 5:02pm
I've seen the same problem, and it goes away if I let the Dell utility control wireless. for some reason, WindowsXP sometimes takes over and that's when problems start...

(Other than that, I've seen that if the card gets really hot, it may start flaking out (1450 internal))

Art
Reply
Reply
post #9 of 13
2/4/05 at 3:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by AbSoluTc
Yeah. Its a really odd occurance. I have my laptop and a desktop that both run wifi. The desktop uses a PCI linksys wifi card and the laptop has whatever the dell one is. Both will cut out at the same time. The wifi network (my wireless network) will disappear completely. A normal unplug and plug in does nothing. I have to wait for it to come back (where ever the heck it went). However, in that time I usually just hard wire the connection and bingo bango im back online. So its not the router itself persay. Its something with the wifi. I will see about updating the firmware if there is any and go from there.

I would use the wifi as my only connect, but it's so darn buggy. I have tried every channel btw.
You have wireless interference... (a wireless phone or another wireless router)... try to change the channel your router is using...

Make sure your routeur has the lastest firmware...
Reply
Reply
post #10 of 13
2/4/05 at 4:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by thomaszak
Heh, This may not be funny to you but I am thinking that the obvious answer is that your neighbors have 2.4ghz phones. The reason it cuts out in the evening is for the obvious reason.. people enjoy talking on the phone in the evening. This may require some more serious tweaking, I have the same problem where I cannot get the wireless to startup for the life of me, and then I realize that my mother is on the phone.
I had the same problem with my belkin 802.11b router... I live in an apartment and my neighbors cordless phones (I have a 5.4Ghz phone so mine doesnt interfere...) were interfering with my router while running on the default channel. You may also have a neighbor with another router on the same channel.

My recommendation... go into your router setup and change your channel (1, 6, and 11 are the best channels according to my research.) If that doesnt work, your router has an internal problem.
Reply
Reply
post #11 of 13
2/8/05 at 10:19am

Double check the MTU setting on your router/acceess point...

When we moved last year, we started experiencing similar problems with intermittent outages. Wireless connections, especially my for my wife and kids where they run multiple IM packages would never stay up for more than a few minutes. Having switched from Comcast Cable to Verizon DSL, I suspected that had something to due with it and after further research, I found that when doing PPPoE over DSL, the MTU setting was too large (mine were set to 1500 on one router and “auto” on the other one I tried). After manually setting the MTU to 1492 connectivity has been restored. Here are some further links for reference. The issue is the same for both, but one was in reference to Linksys and the other NetGear.

http://kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_files/n100603.asp

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/rema...p,16~mode=flat

Hope this helps!
--Brian
Reply
Reply
post #12 of 13
2/8/05 at 10:41am
Quote:
Originally Posted by bklawton
When we moved last year, we started experiencing similar problems with intermittent outages. Wireless connections, especially my for my wife and kids where they run multiple IM packages would never stay up for more than a few minutes. Having switched from Comcast Cable to Verizon DSL, I suspected that had something to due with it and after further research, I found that when doing PPPoE over DSL, the MTU setting was too large (mine were set to 1500 on one router and “auto” on the other one I tried). After manually setting the MTU to 1492 connectivity has been restored. Here are some further links for reference. The issue is the same for both, but one was in reference to Linksys and the other NetGear.

http://kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_files/n100603.asp

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/rema...p,16~mode=flat

Hope this helps!
--Brian
So you change the mtu on the router not the client machines? When I set up an ICS server at home that shares (dial-up) connection over wi-fi, my PC's couldn't connect to sites via dns names but changing the mtu (using drtcp on the clients) to 1492 fixed the problem. Go figure.
Reply
Reply
post #13 of 13
2/8/05 at 11:11am
Changing it individually on all of your clients will have the same effect, but that would seem like a lot of work. I only made the change on my router and everything is now working fine.

--Brian
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
NotebookForums.com › Forums › Notebook Manufacturers › Dell Notebook Forums › Dell Legacy (single-core notebooks) › Linksys Wifi Connection & Dell Wifi Dropping