I’ve got a Linksys G router. It’s nice. It’s reasonably fast. However…
I keep dropping connection. It happens pretty often- I’ll just be a’surfin’, and I’ll get a little popup down near my taskbar telling me that I’ve lost connection. I wait a few seconds, and it comes back up. It can’t be a matter of interference- the router is just a few feet away from my computers (both do it). Opening some webpages seems to trigger it- I found one comment page on Fark that did it every damn time I tried to open the page… I never did manage to open that page.
I can’t seem to find any mention of that sort of behavior on Linksys’ webpage. It’s just an annoyance, really- but, dammit…
Same thing happened to me on several machines. I solved it by swallowing my pride and letting windows (rather than the router’s own software) manage the wireless network, and putting the long wep key into it.
I suspect it was windows that was causing the disconnections by trying to take over (the ‘let windows manage my network’ box kept re-checking it’self when I unchecked it)
Or… You could try unchecking that box, and seeing if it stays unchecked (you get to it by double clicking the little monitor and clicking on ‘properties’)
I had this problem once with one wireless network and it turned out that it was getting interference from cordless phones of a certain frequency. Probably not it but I’d try and eliminate that as a source. And it wasn’t just our cordless phone, the next door neighbors’ phones seemed to do it as well.
For what it’s worth, I had the same problem with my old router. It turned out to be the router. It was rather frustrating as well. When I got the new router, things worked fine. A co-worked had a similar experience, exchanged his router for another one of the same model, and it also worked fine.
I think as we see the price of wireless gear drop, we also see a drop in quality control.
I suspect that the problem is in the router. Have you checked to see if there is newer firmware that can be installed? I would also reset the router to the default settings and see if that helps. I had some problems with mine when I first starting using it and a reset repaired it.
First thing I’d try is seeing if there is a firmware upgrade for your router or a newer driver version for your wireless card (what kind of wireless card, by the way? Is it also a Linksys?); if so, download and install to see if that helps. Don’t upgrade the firmware over a wireless connection, though… you can actually damage some routers doing this wirelessly.
It sounds to me (and I could well be wrong just going on the info. that I have) as if the dropped connections and the pages timing out are two separate issues.
For the pages timing out: that could well be a setting inside the router. Access the routers configuration page (if I recall correctly, Linksys uses 192.168.1.1 by default… plug that number into the address bar of your browser. I think Linksys uses “admin” as both the username and password…). Poke around through the settings and look for something called MTU. If you find it, what is it set for now?
For the dropped connections: could be interference, in which case you could try changing the channel it broadcasts on (probably it is set on 6 by default… try channel 1 or channel 11, the other channels have a bit of overlap). You could also try locking down the speed from it’s default setting to a lower setting (and no, you probably won’t notice the difference; the highest speed settings are usually not reached, except maybe in Ad-Hoc mode). If your wireless card is not a Linksys card, there may well be some proprietary modes that Linksys has in your router; disabling them may help (have to refer you to tech. support for that though… don’t have a Linksys emulator here to look at…). Also, as others have suggested, see if XP’s wireless utility is enabled or not. If it is, uncheck the box to let Linksys’s utility control the connection; that’s usually best IMO.
Um, off the top of my head, that’s it… hope it helps a bit.
I had similar problems with the exact same router. I solved it by, like Lobsang said, by getting rid of the Linksys network managing program. It kept fighting with XP over the settings.
