Router WTF Q's...

[longtab]

Problem: Everytime I want to hop back on the internet after a brief period of inactivity I have to restart my laptop because my router is dropping me.

Our Set-up: My cable modem is plugged into the router, and my desktop PC is plugged into the router. My laptop accesses the router wirelessly. That's pretty much it.

What I Do: I thought at most all I would have to do is disable then re-enable my wireless connection to my router. But to no avail... I have to restart my laptop everytime when it hasn't been surfing the net for over one our. I have even uninstalled/reinstalled my wireless card driver... & nothing. I've OSINT'd my ass off trying to figure this out and know it's probably something pathetically simple that I keep overlooking.

Question: WTF am I missing here? The router is only 15 feet away from my laptop station so what is going on?

[Maytime]

The same thing happened to my laptop, all I did was repair the connection by going through My Network Places->right clicking on the connection and left clicking on repair. Hope that helps.

[fighting_irish]

You can also go out to manufactures support site and see if they have an updated driver for your network card to see if that helps correct the problem.

I downloaded the new driver for my dell laptop which has an internal WLAN MiniPCI Card and the new features are pretty cool. It has a better interface and give a more graphical representation of signal to noise ratio. It is worth a try to see if that corrects your problem.

[keith]

longtab,
I'm assuming your desktop doesn't lose it's connection (hard wire, right?) after awhile. If it does, it's a sign that your router is going out (usually heat related).

Okay, so a laptop loses it's wireless connection after awhile. This is a common problem because some manufacturers build in a 'sleep mode' for internal wireless adapters when they haven't been used and some drivers for external cards do the same. They call it a power saving feature, I call it a pain in the ass.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you exactly where that setting is. Check in your battery settings (some manufacturers have their oem package that manages this), check your wireless network settings (there might be a checkbox there), and anywhere else you can think of that it might be. Sorry that I can't be more helpful about finding this little setting.

This may not be the problem though. Different network cards react to routers different than others... I had one that would drop the connection randomly and I would have to disable the adapter and then enable it to get it to accept connections again. The wifi network type was 'open' with no WEP key. When I changed the router to be 'shared' with a WEP key, my connection no longer dropped. So, try changing up some of your router settings such as channel and connection type and see if that makes a difference.

[longtab]

Originally Posted by keith

longtab,
I'm assuming your desktop doesn't lose it's connection (hard wire, right?) after awhile. If it does, it's a sign that your router is going out (usually heat related).

Okay, so a laptop loses it's wireless connection after awhile. This is a common problem because some manufacturers build in a 'sleep mode' for internal wireless adapters when they haven't been used and some drivers for external cards do the same. They call it a power saving feature, I call it a pain in the ass.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you exactly where that setting is. Check in your battery settings (some manufacturers have their oem package that manages this), check your wireless network settings (there might be a checkbox there), and anywhere else you can think of that it might be. Sorry that I can't be more helpful about finding this little setting.

This may not be the problem though. Different network cards react to routers different than others... I had one that would drop the connection randomly and I would have to disable the adapter and then enable it to get it to accept connections again. The wifi network type was 'open' with no WEP key. When I changed the router to be 'shared' with a WEP key, my connection no longer dropped. So, try changing up some of your router settings such as channel and connection type and see if that makes a difference.

Hmmm... thanks for the tips. I'll try them all and let ya know what finally "does it".