I am in canada now, im from the usa. When i first got here, the internet wifi was very bad at that place. I then went to another apartment and was told internet wifi here was very fast and reliable. The wifi is fast and reliable here… however, sometimes it does disconnect a bit and a bit slow but thats not a big problem usually.
Well i had noticed something very strange. The last week or so i went to bed pretty late and am online. I noticed that at exactly 3:40am… the wifi immediately disconnects and when i click on the internet icon in the bottom right to look for the internet connection… its no longer there. There are 2 wifi internet names/routers in this building that i live in and i was told they have 2 of them in case one of them have a problem, i connect to the other. Lets call them wireless connection a and b. Wireless A is very fast and reliable. B isn’t that reliable and many times you can’t connect to it though but its still okay. During the day seems to be good but Wireless A is faster than B so i stick with that one.
Anyways, at around 3:40am… wifi goes off. Check the wireless connections… both of them are gone. So i cannot connect to any wireless internet connection at all. I see some other wifi networks but of course thats someone elses and i cannot connect to it b/c u need a passcode for it.
The next day or so, i went to bed pretty late so just going online. Same thing… 3:40am… wifi goes off and when you search for the wifi connections, both are no longer there. So thats when i knew this isn’t a coincidence because the first time it happened… i remembered what time it was b/c it was like exactly same time. I then go to bed b/c i cannot even go online anymore.
Yesterday i went to bed late again just to see if this is indeed a disconnect at exactly same time. What you know… same thing 3:40am or so it disconnects and no wifi at all. The thing that is different though is i stayed up still to see when the wifi would come back. I think around 4:05 am or so the wifi connection reappeared and i could connect to it no problem. However, it didn’t seem to do that the 1st time as i recalled i stayed up to 4 something and still no wifi.
Does anyone know what is the cause of this? It seems very strange that the wifi would go out and the wifi network names would just go away at exactly same time every night. I was told if the wifi ever have any problems, just walk upstairs to this door where the routers are place… its like one floor under me and in like this place where its in a stairway of a closet. Im not sure how to explain it. To disconnect the power and replug it and wait 1 minute.
I have not done this yet at all b/c i haven’t had much problems during the day. The thing is im curious why this happens at exactly 3:40am.
Anyone here ever have this problem? The only thing i know is the name of the internet in my building is Videotron.
Most wi-fi routers have a setup screen. One of those screens can limit access by day of the week or time.
This is for a Linksys Wi-fi. a popular home wi-fi router. The access restriction by date is towards the bottom.
I’ve never used this feature. But, I guess parents with kids might want to shut down the Internet for them at bedtime. Perhaps a building landlord would too? But I’ve never heard of any landlords doing something like that.
http://kb.linksys.com/Linksys/ukp.aspx?pid=80&vw=1&articleid=4041
Now this is what I find strange. You walk upstairs and it takes you to a closet below you. A stairway in a closet. You’re sure you are awake at 3:40 am?
Where the Routers Are sounds like a sci-fi novella.
I have my internet stuff on a ordinary kitchen timer to shut if off for a few minutes in the middle of the night so the software resets. Maybe something similar?
I am renting a furnished apartment in this building that has high speed internet but its only wifi. Basically im given 2 passwords to the 2 wifi connections. I was also shown where the 2 routers are… its basically downstairs in this room. Its like in this room where there are stairs… i dont know how to explain it. The 2 routers are there…
It could be that the routers can’t handle more than 24-hour’s worth of traffic without crashing. So, they set it up to shutdown and restart for a little bit every day at a time when it’s least likely to be in use.
It could also be a limitation of the internet provider to reset every night at around that time and the apartment manages set the wireless to go down for the same time to reduce confusion/frustration. Or they could have had complaints from their ISP that they’re online too long (e.g. in the dial-up days, it was common to get d/c’ed every 4 hours).
Want to answer few things.
There are 2 wifi connections. Lets call them Connection A and Connection B. Both have the same password if i want to connect to either one. I always choose connection A. But if connection A has problems or doesn’'t work, i choose B. Usually one of them will work very good while the other is either good, okay or not that good. So i always see these 2 connections when im on my laptop until that time of course.
Here is the thing. I had asked if Connection A… if that was for the TP Link or for the linksys. Thus there are 2 wifi connections and 2 routers. Connection A which is usually the more reliable one… i was told it was for the TP actually and connection B was for the cisco linkys. That seems to be the opposite of what you expect? The thing was they was not sure which one it was. Is there a way to find out?
Another thing is i had went to that router and connected my laptop with an ethernet cable to the tp link router port. I was connected to Connection B on my wifi. Then i connected the ethernet to it and was still connected to Connection B. Does that mean that tp link has to be connection B and thus connection A is the linksys and thus the person told me the wrong thing? Again they are not sure. Also when i check the wifi connection properties, connection A is WEP. Connection B is WPA2. Does that give you a clue which connection is which router?
Last night i went there at 3:45am and took a look. The wifi of course went of as usual at 3:40am. When i went there… both the linksys router and the tp link router was powered off. I then unplugged the power cord from each of them and plugged it back in, same thing. The power didn’t appear. So this means that at 3:40am, the power goes off in both routers since when i got there 3:45am… there was no power at all.
What does this mean then?
Assuming the outlet power was out, that rules out the router settings as being the cause, and suggests something like what Mdcastle mentioned. You’d need to look to see why the power goes out each night
I have a wild guess about the routine power outage.
It’s not uncommon for a router or modem to foul up and need to be power-cycled to start working again. This used to happen to me about monthly; lately it’s closer to yearly.
It’s possible that the owner or manager got tired of people complaining about internet service failures, so he put the gear on a controllable power supply that shuts off for 5 minutes every night, to avoid calls from frustrated residents.
If so, your only recourse would be to do things that aren’t really advisable.
- plug the units into a different receptacle and hope they don’t fail often (but they will)
- replace the units with newer ones, which will be more reliable – but in this case you REALLY need to know whether one of them is the modem, and not mess with it.
Like I said, I really don’t advise that.
Oops, you have another option, for when you must browse at 3:40 AM and can’t take a coffee break: learn to use your mobile phone. Google “tethering android” or “tethering iphone” or whatever it is you have, and also include your service provider. If you have an unlimited plan, you’ll probably have to “sneak” tethering, which is possible. Service providers with customers on unlimited plans don’t like them tethering because they use too much bandwidth.)
Yup.
I had the exact same issue when I had set up a P2P LOS link that was 1/4 mile long for my parents (they had no cable tv or anything and that was the nearest neighbor that did). That being said, the two routers performing the P2P LOS link would fail from time to time. So, in order to avoid phone calls from my dad, I bought two timers, and each turned off for 30 minutes each day at… 3:30 AM.
This was several years ago with Linksys 54G that could be flashed. Any ways…
OP asked, can you tell which router is which when you logon? It is possible with Backtrack or the like or any other utility that allows you to scan for AP’s and give you the MAC address of each. Within the MAC there is a vendor code that will tell you which one is which.
Thinking about it some more… you have two routers, one WEP and one WPA2. I htink the WEP was the first router and 1) did not provide adequate coverage on its own, 2) would overheat and fail. Hence, the 2nd router with WPA2 and the timer to turn them off. Just my WAG.
There is one problem i have with this. I don’t have a cell phone here in canada. I didn’t get one b/c i dont need one… i dont know much ppl here in canada and thus a cell phone i would rarely ever use. I make all phone calls using my gmail google voice on the laptop or sometimes i use my landline phone…
Also another thing i noticed. Since it was daylight savings time this week… i noticed that now instead of 3:40am this happens… now it happens at 2:40am. So it would go off back then at 3:40am and come back around 4:08am or so which is a 28 minute time span. That wasn’t that bad b/c i would rarely be on that late. However… now its 2:40am… and i assume it comes back at 3:08am. This would be a bigger problem though. The thing was it wasn’t that bad since 3:40am… but 2:40am that is pretty big problem b/c some days i will need to be on around that time.
Is there a reason why the timer didn’t adjust for daylight savings time? This was a pretty big worry of mine a few days ago b/c 3:40am it going out for 28 minutes isn’t that bad but if its 1 hour earlier, that is a pretty big problem…
Do you know how you would turn the timer off? Im obviously not going to do this by myself and will ask for permission first if this problem isn’t fixed. Thing is this… if this thing was at say 4:40am to 5:08am… this would not be a problem b/c i would be asleep at this time already and would almost never be online at this time. However i do a lot of stuff online late and i need reliable internet and well it doing this now from 2:40am to 3:08am is a huge problem.
Do you think the person that i rent from… they could change the exact time the power goes off for the router? Such as could they change it from 2:40am to 4:40am? Obvioulsy them making it 3:40am is good b/c rarely anyone is awake but im awake at that time sometimes when im online. How would they change it? Is it just them coming to that router and then making a change to it or is it going to involve something with logging on to the router settings with a computer?
The 2 routers… one is WEP and other is WPA2. The main wifi connection i use is the WEP one. I use the WPA2 other times when the WEP doesn’t connect. However… there is another strange issue i noticed. The WEP one… it works on monday, tuesday, wednesday. But then on thursday or friday… i can’t connect to it and have to use the WPA2. Yesterday… i used the WPA2 one because i couldn’t connect to the WEP one. Then i switched to the WEP one at night because i couldn’t connect to the WPA2. And today… i can only connect to the WEP one… when i try to do wpa2… it cannot connect. Is there a reason for this? Some days i can connect with either one. But 3-4 days… i can only connect to only one of them…
Okay so i got to speak to the person that knows about the internet in this building according to the person that does the renting, the person who does the renting gave me their phone number and i gave them a call. I told them everything and they at first said it was videotrons problem… but the moment i mentioned that both the TP Link router and the cisco router both powers out at night… then he said okay thats not videotrons issue and its something thats in the building.
I was given the username/password for the router and right now im logged into it. Can someone tell me if i can see if there is any setting on the router that could cause this? There is lot of settings on the router.
Router is Wireless N Gigabyte Router WRT310N v.2
I was told that if i cant fix this issue by checking the wireless settings, i would give him a call again and he probably could come and take a look at it but if i could fix this issue if its some router setting it woudl be great.
Based on what you wrote in Post 8, the electrical outlet power goes out. There’s no setting in the router for that. You need to find out what shuts off the power to that outlet.
ETA: or find a different outlet that doesn’t lose power at night. Routers don’t take a lot of power, so an extension cord should be OK, assuming it won’t get walked on, and isn’t strung over anything that could damage the insulation.
Hi so if i ask that person to come and take a look at it, would he be able to do this easily? The problem though of course is the internet goes out at 2:40am and thus no one is awake at the time thus they wouldn’t see the problem.
Obviously if he looks at it during the daytime, he wouldn’t see a problem with it.
The internet person, you mean? No, as this is nothing to do with the internet it seems, purely a power issue. There’s nothing for him to look at.
Does the building not have a caretaker? Can you not simply plug the gear into different outlets? Can you be there physically observing it at 3:40am?
Yes, be there at 2:40/3:40 am, with a lamp or anything that you can use to tell if an outlet has power. When the router turns off, find a nearby outlet that still has power. Plug the routers into that outlet.
Pauly01, are the routers plugged directly into an electrical outlet in the wall? They aren’t plugged into an extension cord or power strip or anything else, are they?
Here are the pictures i took of the 2 routers and the power outlet. Someone on the other forum told me to post pictures. You can see the cisco modem/router and the tp link router. Both of these are pretty close to one another. They are attached to the wall in that room near the emergency exit stairwell.
The picture at the end with power outlet… 2 of the outlets are used by the cisco modem/router and the tp link router. there is one spot left as you can see to plug something in but its very small. If you look at the last picture… you see the outlet… it goes into this thing. Its like put into this locked door? Basically that thing you cannot open it because theres actually a lock to it. So imagine its like locker inside and that outlet string to the left of it goes in there.
Someone mentioned that i could buy a power cord and do that instead. The problem would be this… where in the world would i attach the new cord to? Someone wanted me to attach the two wires of the modem/router and router to a new power cord instead of that one currently being used in the picture. Okay i can do that if i buy a power cord… but where am i suppose to attach the power cord to? Theres no outlet at all in that area. Obviously there is one in that locker or whatitever it is that the power cord is attached to in the picture but again you cant open it. Imagine a string that cord thats put inside the locker and you cant pull it out. Thats how it is for that power cord.
There are 2 ppl i spoke to. 1 is the person who showed me the apartment and thus i rented apartment from them, they are the ones that does the showing to potential rentors. That person gave me phone number of the person who tells me they know how the internet and how the stuff in the building is setup and to contact them which i did and was given the password to one of the routers username/password to access the information.
The only out there is avaiable is that tiny one with 3 outlets in the picture. That outlet is plugged into this lockbox or whatever it is that you cannot see b/c its a wire that goes into a box?
Zenbeam, im not sure how to explain it but basically the routers both conenct into a very tiny electircial outlet with 3 plugs avaiable only and that outlet goes into this lockbox shown in the picture…
Does that help?
What they’re saying is that this is an issue with the electrical wiring in your building. For some reason, the power is interrupted. The sort of person who would need to look into it is an electrician.
The person who suggested a new power cord probably meant you should find a new outlet to plug it into, and run a long extension cord there. I’m not sure if that is possible in your setup. Do what ZenBeam suggests.