my wireless is acting up....

[Annulus]

X-posted from software forum.

Hi. I have a linksky wireless router. I have had no problems using it with my dell laptop (wireless) for the last year. But, since last week, every hour while playing I will get disconnected from Partypoker. I check my signal and it is often at this time low or very low. I hit repair and then it is back to 'excellent'. Anyone know what the problem is? This happens very often and it never happened before this last week.

[StrikeR300]

Possibilities:

#1 & Most Likely) Party poker has alledgely been acting up lately, could be on their end not yours.

#2) Something is interfering with your signal:
* Have you moved spots, or moved your router?
* Has something been moved, or something new added to the house?
* Did someone just set up another network around you, & you're connecting to the wrong one?

3) Have you tried to update your drivers recently?

[bjb23]

i have heard very bad things about the wireless cards that come with dell. i have a dell lappy as well and many times when i first start my computer, i have to repair the wireless connection just to get it to connect to the internet. unfortunately, i dont have any idea how to fix it and it hasnt been that big of a problem for me as it seems to be fine after that initial repair.

im interested if anyone knows of a solution to this problem as well.

[flash8pro]

I would first try changing the wireless channel that your router uses.

You can find this in the wireless menu in your router's configuration console (typically you enter 192.168.0.1 in your browser to get there - username and password should both be "linksys").

The default value usually is: 6 - 2.442GHz - if someone else (like a neighbor) has recently set up their own wireless network, it could be interfering with your signal. Experiment with changing this value to other settings, and see if it improves things.

Also, I would enable your SSID broadcast as long as you have WPA security enabled (both of these are found in "Wireless Security" in the configuration console). This will make it easier for your wireless card to communicate reliably with the router.

On my Dell laptop, the wireless seems to work much better when I use the Windows wireless manager instead of the Intel manager. Before you do that, however, go into the Intel manager, find "Adapter settings", and find your broadcast power setting - change this from default to maximum. Then tell it to allow Windows to manage the device.

Try these things and post back your results.

[Annulus]

thanks guys for the suggestions. fwiw, i have not moved nor made any changes to my house or computer set-up in the last year.

thanks flashpro for that writeup. i will definitly save what you said if things act up again. this is what i did in the mean time and things have been back to normal for the last 24 hours or so. all i did was change the ethernet plug in on the wireless router (i suck at computers). not sure if this makes sense, but i moved it from the #1 spot to the #2 spot on the wireless router. i figured why not try something, and then reset the wireless router. so far no problems. but if things act up again, i will try what you suggested. thanks again.

[flash8pro]

I can tell you that it is the reset that solved your problem, not the wire change (unless there just happens to be faulty wiring in the #1 port, but that's very unlikely).

Now since you are using wireless, I'm assuming the ethernet cable you mentioned is the one connecting your router and modem, correct? If that is the case and you moved the cable from the port with a #1 marked above it to the #2 port, then you are not using your router as a router, but rather as a wireless access point.

If you want to use the router as a router, you need to connect the modem to the "WAN" or "Internet" port (it is labeled differently on different routers - and it usually is by itself, separated from the grouped switch ports). "WAN" simply means "Wide Area Network" as opposed to "LAN", which is "Local Area Network". WAN refers to the Internet in your case and LAN refers to your home network. The biggest difference is that you have NO hardware firewall when you use the router as a wireless access point by not using the WAN port. By connecting the modem to one of the switch ports (the numbered ports), the router is simply converting a wired connection to a wireless connection and just passes the traffic along.

The WAN port is special because your LAN is considered to be a "safe zone" (i.e. you're not going to hack yourself or intentionally transfer viruses between your computers, etc.), therefore the router doesn't protect those ports with a firewall. Potential threats are assumed to come from the WAN, so that's why it does have a firewall. Also, all of your advanced routing features (which most users do not use anyway) function through the WAN port.

Unless you are doing this intentionally for some reason, I strongly suggest you use the router as a router - the firewall alone will save you from many potential headaches that await exposed computers on the Internet.