Networking & wireless forum: Home wireless network connection getting intermittent connections, help!

doing this over power lines. The only thing stopping them is market saturation. The cost of putting in all the router/switches, service centers, is holding them up, I imagine.

In markets where their is no service, this is a no-brainer.

Well Cory, there are a lot of variables here that would take forever to go through, but I'll try to shoot off a checklist as a start, and let others add on. The 1st thing I have to ask is "Has ANYTHING changed just before the problem started?".

PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT ANYTHING YOU CAN THING OF THAT CORRESPONDS WITH THE PROBLEM START DATE MAY BE HELPFUL. YOU CAN LOOK AT YOUR EVENT LOGS ALSO, IF THEY HAVEN'T BEEN OVERWRITTEN FROM THAT DATE.
1. Did you pull down any MS updates for your USB adapter? They should help, but may not be configured right. Right click on the wireless adapter and look at the properties/driver and see if the date corresponds. (If it is real old, when you're done troubleshooting, you'll probably want to pull the current version)
2. Did you update your router firmware? (This is another update you'll want to do after everything is working well)
3. Have you changed your computer at all or moved the adapter to a different USB slot? Did you add a VPN for your company, or install software that may affect it? Think along those lines.
4. Does it happen at a certain time or during an event? For instance, I don't think you mentioned what level of 802.11 your are running which will correspond with the frequency. Judging by the age, you are probably running 802.11b and/or g which runs at 2.4Mhz. Frequency use is government controlled, but that frequency is known as the "dirty" frequency, because it wasn't really locked down. Because of this, a small list of SOME of the products that may interfere are 2.4mhz cordless phones, microwave ovens, baby monitors, etc. Have you bought any of these, or does the problem occur maybe while someone is using the microwave? Believe me, this happens a lot.
5. Did a neighbor put up a wireless network on the same channel as yours, or that is competing with your router? There are tons of utilities out there (your adapter vendor probably has them as well). You could possibly just change the channel and and make your access point the preferred one and tell your card not to use any other. (I'm a little rusty in XP, but I think you can do that).
6. Are there any electronic devices or power supplies close to your router or card?
7. Is your router and network secure and locked down? Maybe someone is hacking into your router, or riding your connection to the Internet and taking up bandwidth. Depending on the router and card, try to run at WPA2-AES (WEP is virtually useless, and WPA with TKIP was just been hacked in under a minute), but if WPA2 isn't there take WPA. Make sure you changed the default admin passwords on the router on both the Internet side and the Wireless side. Implement MAC filtering so only the adapters with the proper MAC addresses can get on (this is an excellent way of securing, and it should be documented).
8. Listen to the other posts that come out because I'm sure you'll get a lot more good info. I tried to cover the easier pieces 1st. But if you can't figure it out, you may want to download the latest drivers for your card and router and just reset and reconfigure everything from scratch with the tips you learn from this forum.
9. Lastly, 2 years is not bad for a USB adapter (or even router in some cases), and the older ones are dirt cheap. Just a thought, and if you do get to that point, but an adapter that is the same brand as the router (so you MIGHT be able to get tech support without finger pointing).

Good luck Cory and sorry for such a long post.

Ron Pall CISSP,CISM,CISA,CGEIT

RonPal wrote: "Depending on the router and card, try to run at WPA2-AES (WEP is virtually useless, and WPA with TKIP was just been hacked in under a minute), but if WPA2 isn't there take WPA."

This is unduly alarmist. WEP is not "virtually useless." Yes, it CAN be hacked, but unless there's some reason to suspect that someone would have some incentive to take the trouble to do so and is one of the relatively few people with the ability to do so, then it will work to keep the neighbors from leeching off your connection.

WPA/TKIP has, only within the past couple of weeks, been hacked by some top-level mathematicians/cryptologists and a proof of concept has been demonstrated, but the hacking of a real-world system protected by WPA/TKIP has never yet been experienced "in the wild," so to speak.

There is a mindset going around that home wireless networks need military-level protection. This is patently absurd. Somebody has to want to get onto your network pretty badly to hack even WEP, and this is so unlikely that you can more safely disregard it as a possibility than you can cross the street in front of your home.

Ron,
How can I change 802.1 setting for my Lenovo T500 laptop with OS = XP? uses " THINK VANTAGE".
I have U verse. 3 gig ram.

I have same problem with internal wifi.

Robert

Hi:

There is a wide range of reasons this can happen. Your wireless card may be failing but not dead yet, your driver may need to be refreshed, your Winsock may have issues and you might have some interference with the wireless frequency. So do uninstall the wireless driver and get an update if available. Try another usb device and if it too drops the signal you probably need an os re-install.


Ron

Not that I disagree that this could be a bad router, but before you go out and buy a new router (if you get to that point), perform a factory reset on the existing router and reconfigure it like it is new. Check the vendor site and make sure you are also running the latest firmware on the router. Again, the router could be bad, but it may just be that it needs a full reset. I'm sorry, but in the last several months, I've had several USB cards go bad on me. If they are connected directly into the slot over 2 years, I'm sure it's been "bumped" a few times. If it has a wire leading to it, try repositioning that.

The fact that your laptop connects with internet access to your router proves the router works fine. This leaves the issue at the desktop. If you have another wireless adapter on hand try it first. In my experience removal and reinstallation of the current adapter may solve most connectivity problems as long as the adapter still works. Then the troubleshooting gets deeper from there. Reconfiguring the computer internet IP settings. Resetting the router to help with connectivity issues pertaining to desktop, etc. If you contact customer support from your wireless adapter manufacturer they may be able to walk you through reconfiguring your desktop. I own all linksys items and they will sit for hours if necessary to get all your items to work on the network. Whatever you decide start at the desktop as that is the trouble spot.

Cory -

I am not familiar with the layout of your place - where the router is located vs where the PC sits, but if I had to take a stab at this issue, I'd say it's one of two things... Either

A.) The USB dongle is no longer working properly.

B.) There's something between the router and desktop that's causing electromagnetic interference.

You can try moving the PC setup somewhere else in the house/apartment (if only for a quick test) and see if that resolves the situation. You can also take note of when exactly these drops occur and see if there's a cordless phone being used, or perhaps a microwave oven being used to heat something.

You can also try getting another cheap USB dongle (they're about $20 USD) and replacing the one you've got.

You can also try using the laptop in the same area where the desktop usually sits to see if it also suffers from the same drops in connection.

In your situation, a solution is likely very simple. Just change channel (frequency) in your access point to another one and try over again.

I will presume you have a secure wireless network which is not being used by the whole neighborhood.
In my instance our problem was the internal wiring of our new home. The person who had installed the inside the walls house cable did not use the recommended crimper for the wall termination. Same symptoms as you. Work for days, hours, then a lot of fiddling about and back working again for days or hours. If there is noise on this connection your ISP tries to re-assign the network address to your cable modem. When you fiddle with the wall connection you temporarily fix the problem. Have someone re-crimp your coax cable connectors.

Hi Cory,

Wireless communications breaking down can be due to a lot of different things.

I have had the same problem sometimes in my house. However as I passed my amateur radio test (M1DKZ) and used to do radio with a radio scouting team I learned a lot of useful things about the way wireless works.

One of the main things I find that certainly increases the wi-fi connectivity is to check the position of the antenna on the back of the PC.

This all depends on the type of wireless card you have in your PC, if it is a small USB dongle and it's on it's own cable try moving from vertical to horizontal or vice versa. One way will give a really good signal and the other way will give very little or no signal with random outages of the network and very poor speeds (exactly like what you are describing).

If you have a card in your PC with an antenna sticking out the back, firstly ensure the antenna is fully screwed in, only use your hands to screw it in, if it's too tight it can damage the socket, so hand tightened will do.

You will also notice that these extra antennas also have a pivot point on them that allows them to spin round without unscrewing, again do a similar thing as described above, try it in both horizontal and vertical mode, also when turning it turn the antenna in the same direction you turned it when screwing it in, that way your turning it on it's pivot point and not unscrewing the antenna.

If you are unable to turn the antenna on your PC, if your wi-fi router has an antenna on the back, turn that round, if it has two antenna's (some do), put one vertical and one horizontal and this should sort all problems out.

The reason for this is all to do with polarization. For one device to receive another device through radio it's polarization needs to match the other device (either horizontally or vertically). If it doesn't it can quite easily lose all the signal.

If you have satellite TV and you add new channels you sometimes need to tell them what the polarization is or you don't receive anything, and this works in the same way (although you can't see your "LNB" turning to match the polarisation). Also some areas you will notice have normal TV antennna's sidewards compared to others, again this is all down to polarisation.

The main thing polarisation is used for is to block out unwanted signals, for example near us we have two TV transmitters the main one on Winter Hill which is vertically polarised, we also have a repeater one which is mainly used by the people of Bolton who aren't able to get the Winter Hill transmitter due to the signal flying over the top of them. So that the two don't interfere with each other because the Bolton repeater will carry on out beyond where the Winter Hill one is low enough to be received, Winter Hill is sent out vertically, and the repeater is sent out horizontally, thus allowing all the antenna's that are vertically aligned to ignore the repeater and not cause interference.

You can also use this same trick to block out other wi-fi networks if they are causing interference (although most of the time there is so few in the area you shouldn't run into this problem).

If possible you are far better moving the antenna/usb stick on the computer than on the wi-fi box, because by moving the one on the wi-fi box unless you have two antennas on the box you are more likely to upset things for all the other computers, like the laptop that is connecting to it. Most laptops have bi-polarization antenna's so it shouldn't make any difference, but there are a few out there that are set up to be horizontal polarisation.

I did discover recently that the Sony PS3 only has single polarization as my friend couldn't get his to connect when it was in tower mode, we put it on it's side and it connected perfectly, only problem was he wanted his PS3 as a tower to fit next to the TV, and when we moved the antenna round on the wi-fi box his laptop stopped connecting, in the end he settled for a wired connection on the PS3.

I notice you said that you've had it working before, polarization could still be a problem, because at some point someone may have slightly moved either the computer, or the USB stick or the antenna on the wi-fi box and that would kill the connection. Last night I had the same problem on my desktop computer, I'd only moved the desktop about a centimeter, but it had knocked the antenna at the back from horizontal to pointing fully down (verticall). My signal was at 1 bar, I moved the antenna back to vertical and the signal shot up to 5 bars.

If polarization doesn't sort your problems out then it could be due to numerous other things, think about anything new you may have added to your house, such as a new TV, microwave, fridge freezer, etc. Anything that might interfere with wi-fi networking. Again altering the polarization might sort these interferences out as you would be shielding the wi-fi from them, or just seeing if you can move them a bit. With radio there is a lot that can get in the way, more so over long distances but even in houses some radio can be affected by putting some appliances in the wrong place (and that sticker that says "This device has been checked to not interfere with other electronic devices" all it means is they've tried to shield it to the best of their abilities, but that doesn't 100% guarantee that it will not interfere with anything else, especially radio.

Below is a website with a little bit about polarization

http://www.astronwireless.com/topic-archives-antenna-polarization.asp

I just finished restoring a 2 year old pc for a friends business.
The computer was running so bad that instead of just cleanin it I decided to do a clean install from the hidden partition. Now I am not recomending you do this first. Try changing the channnel as other mentioned and making sure you have no phones running in the 2.4 gigahertz that your router is running on, near the router as this may create interference with your router.

The reason why I am gettin involved in this discussion is to help you first and second because I just finish experiencing the same issue with this restoration. But I had it too with other computer in the family running XP.

1-Before you do any of what I am about to discuss, you should create a restore point and have the original drivers you had when you purchase your USB Wireless ready maybe on a thumb drive, downloading them from the manufacturer of your USB wifi.

2-Create a restore point by clicking the start orb, place your mouse over the install applications, go to Advance Options, then System Tools and click on Restore Point. Make sure the restore point succeded and close the window.

3-The following must be done at your own risk, but I most tell you that this is how I have fix the same problems. Specially in your post you indicated that you are a non techie.

- A little bit of background - You mentioned that when you run a cat 5 cable from the router to your pc, that everything works fine. Because the Ethernet controller drivers almost never change, the settings on the register are almost always the same, unless something like an updated driver downloaded from XP update, updates the settings, but because it is consider a STATIC Ethernet Card, it is easy for the pc to connect to the internet via the Ethernet Card and gets a bit tricky when doing it via wi-fi.

This aslo brings me to the point that - We don't know if you have updated your USB wi-fi drivers, AND how many times you have done it.
Updating drivers for Wi-fi, can create the problem you are experiencing, such as I have found out through trial and error.

Uninstalling the drivers from the control panel, hardware tab, does not necessarily fix the problem, because XP keeps folders of hardware install drivers, so as soon as you re-boot the pc, XP will look into those folders, install the drivers found and recreate the conflict.

The only way I have found to STOP XP from loading the same drivers from the folders is by doing a little tweking in the Register. This will give you the ability to start fresh and install the original drivers without any possible changes that may have occur to them or the XP Wireless Zero Configuration manager via an XP patch or a possible update to the USB drivers via Windows Update.

-Another possible situation is that - your wifi usb came with the drivers and application to handle the connection. The software that remembers your password and settings for your router is loaded at startup with windows. However, windows also has its own wifi manager to handle the connection to the router. If for some reason, there is a change on which application handles the wifi connection, this could give you messages such as the one's you are describing, Because there are 2 applications fighting to connect to the router.

-When you install the drivers for the usb, it may have given you the option to use - either the applications that came with the usb or the wifi zero configuration manager that is implemented in windows. If you choose to allow your usb application and then change it to allow windows to manage the connection. The application for the usb is still being loaded at startup and that can create a conflict since two applications are trying to gain access to the router. I have seen this happen, and the internet connection just goes on in circles because you can only have one application managing your connection to the router. After a while it picks one and connects but this a possible explanation for the intermitent connections your are experiencing.

- So that you know - Everytime the Wifi drivers are deleted, the pc rebooted and windows installs the drivers, it creates a new folder in the register. for Example.

-The first installation of the wifi drivers would be named " Wireless Network Connection".

-In removing drivers and rebooting the pc, windows creates a new folder but this time names the connection - Wireless Network Connection 1 " then 2 if you repeat the process, and XP will do this so long as you are trying to fix the problems by repeating the uninstall/install process.

-All of this folders have connections settings, but windows will go throu them until it finds the folder with the appropriate settings.
It will connect but since it has different folders in the register it can also cause a conflict.

-So here is where my help comes in.

1-Revoved the driverss to your wifi usb in the control panel - DO NOT REBOOT THE PC and REMOVE YOUR USB WIFI.
2-Remeber the changes I am about to recommend will be reversed if you did your restore point properly, so don't be too concern, but again it is at your own risk.
3-Click on the Start Orb - Select Run - Type RegEdit.
4-The Register windows will appear.
5-At the top of the register in the menu bar - Select Edit - Select FIND.
6-In the box that appears type Exactly this no quotes - "Wireless Network Connection".
7-DO NOT DESELECT ANY OF THE CHECK MARKS.
8-Press Find Next.

The system will begin searching for that exact phrase. Be patient, it may take a while.

When the first entry is found. Pay attention to this.

The entry will be located insice a folder named Connection (in English) this is the sub-folder - The master folder will be just above this one and is in numerical form.

You must delete the master which inturn will delete the sub label Connections which contains the actual settings.

If by curiosity you look at the Numerical Master, you will see no entries there. It is just the way windows assings a numerical master folder for tracking purposes for the entire os.

We are not done yet.
9- Now that you deleted the first numerical master and sub, you must go back to the toolbar - click edit - click find next.

You most repeat this process, until you get the message from Windows indicating that Searching the register has completed.

-Now I mentioned to you the creation of different folders for everytime you try to uninstall/install the drivers.

so now you most continue doing searches but you will change the search string to (no quotes) " Wireless Network Connection 2 ".

If you find entries continue with Wireless Network Connection 3 - until the search goes through the entire register and comes back with Zero results.

That is the process of cleaning the register from all this wireless connection entries. I KNOW IT SOUNDS hard is not if you do it slowly and carefully.

There is no Register Cleaner in the market that would make the process easier because this are windows register folders and those are not clean as they are not consider safe to clean.

Once you finish and don't find any more entries for Wireless Network Connection, 2,3,4 and so on, now you can reboot your pc.

You will get the message that windows have found new hardware and ask you permission to look for drivers. Cancel this and install your original drivers from your thumbdrive or were ever else you put them.

Finish the installation, there should be a wizard to help you finish the installation, decide if you want windows or yor usb application to manage the connection. Follow the wizard accordingly.

Rember - if you choose Windows to manage your connection, you most make sure that the wizard application that came with your usb do not auto start with windows.

To do this, you can click on the start orb, click run - type msconfig - look at the startup TAB and deselect the usb application.
Restart your computer and you hopefully will be find from here.

Obviously, if you choose to let the usb application manage your connection you don't have to do the above step.

I am sorry that is was very lenghly, I apologize for Grammar Erros and typing and hope that you find a solution to your problem.

Geo

I owned a Y2K company and had dozens of L products. They were 1st rate - they all still work, but are obsolete. Everything I've bought from them more recently has failed - usually the internal power supplies - and they won't help out after the warranty expires. I have a 24 port switch that I bought for emergencies a few years ago, but never used. When I plugged it in it was dead - they told me to go buy another one!

My "L" BEFSR41 is still working reliably and continuously after more than 5 years. Verizon supports nearly evey model made by them. If your ISP does not support a product (any product) get something else. I checked my ISP's list of supported products before I bought my router.

Do you or a nearby neighbor have any Digital Cordless phones in the 2.4Ghz Band? My WiFi would disconnect eevery time I used my Cordless Phone. I had to replace my Cordless phones with 5.8Ghz phones and that solved the problem. No more disconnections. There are even newer Cordless Phones that are wifi friendly.