My wireless connection keeps on dying. Please fix it?

November 24, 2005 3:40 AM

My wireless connection keeps on dying. Please fix it?

It will work for about 5 minutes, and then all of a sudden I can't access webpages or use Trillian. However Windows says I am still connected (I can't ping my router), and the "recieved" light keeps on flashing - but not the "sent". No other machines on the network have any problems. If I unplug my USB adaptor and then plug it back in, the connection works again, but soon drops. Any suggestions?

posted by Orange Goblin to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Ok, I have nothing using my connection now, and using a packet analyser I can see that I am recieving data from all manner of IPs. Is this some sort of DoS? Surely my router should be handling it, and not sending it on to me?
posted by Orange Goblin at 4:00 AM on November 24, 2005

What Windows are you using? I know that before XP SP2 came out, the default wireless handling of XP was GARBAGE... it would constantly do the same thing that yours is doing. Although, have you tried powering down your router and powering it back up again?
posted by antifuse at 4:32 AM on November 24, 2005

Using XP SP2, and yeah, I've tried rebooting the router. Also just tried reinstalling the USB adaptor so lets see how that goes..
posted by Orange Goblin at 4:46 AM on November 24, 2005

Have you tried a wired connection? You mention that you were analyzing traffic. You might get a lot of traffic if you were using P2P software, or Trillian, or VOIP, etc. Do you get the same sort of traffic if you reboot and do nothing before losing the connection?

Barring any strange traffic, I would do the following:

Load three command prompts
In the first, ping -t google.com (or something else outside your network)
In the second, ping -t [router IP]
In the third, ping -t [other computer on network]

If the google ping dies first, you have an internet connection problem, probably unrelated to your machine.

If the router ping dies before the other computer ping, you might have an issue with your router.

If the other computer ping dies before the router ping, you might have another issue with your router.

Since you are using SP2, my first inclination would be to blame your USB adapter (some are very flaky) or the wireless portion of your router.

Are the other computers wireless, or wired? If wired, I'd suspect your USB adapter. If wired, I would suspect the router.

Other things to try:

Change channels on the router.
If other computers are wireless, turn them all off.
Turn off all wireless encryption, etc.
Scan for other networks near yours to see if they might be interfering.

I hope this makes sense, it is too early in the morning to be typing this.
posted by bh at 5:53 AM on November 24, 2005

I was analysing just after a reboot, so had yet to use the connection. I'm doing as you suggested, all 3 pings are still going strong and have been for about 5 mins. I tried my adaptor in another PC, it worked fine, I tried another adaptor in my PC, I had the same problem, so I don't think it is the adaptor. Channels on the router doesn't seem to do anything, I can't turn the other PCs off right now as they are in use, no encryption on the networking (MAC filtering instead) and there is one other network in the area, no idea how that affects things, but since up until last night I hadn't had any problems in a month, I don't know if it would have any effect.
posted by Orange Goblin at 6:13 AM on November 24, 2005

All 3 died at the same time, after about 10-15 mins of web browsing and using Trillian, and then 2 mins of using Azereus. Does this make Azereus the culprit? After the connection died I closed it, and the recieved light kept on flashing.
posted by Orange Goblin at 6:24 AM on November 24, 2005

Oh, Azereus recently had an update as well - maybe it is buggy?
posted by Orange Goblin at 6:25 AM on November 24, 2005

It turned out to be the new version of Azereus, so I went back to the old one.
posted by Orange Goblin at 11:39 AM on November 24, 2005