[underground]

Right, I need some advice from someone who knows about ip addresses and DHCP and stuff, I think.
This is my take on a problem, which I hope a knowledgeable person will make enough sense out of to help with or at least give me some ideas on which avenues to explore on Google.

My internet connextion keeps dropping, and sometimes this progresses into the router - network card connection failing too. Sometimes, the windows 7 diagnosis is something to do with being unable to get an ip address - and usually I have to do ipconfig /release /renew to fix it.

The thing that seems to be causing the problem is wireless - either laptop, or the Philips streamium device I have. I think this is the most likely culprit. All I know about it is, if I let it find the SSID automatically, it does something with DHCP. I don't really know about setting it up manually - i.e. the difference between infrastructure and ad-hoc, for example.

So, tonight, complete disconnect between internet, router and network card and nothing would fix it - apart from disabling the wireless on the router.

So, some kind of conflict might be happening, but I'm fucked if I know how to work out if that's true, or what to do about it.

[tomtom]

Sorry if this is obvious, but have you tried switching everything off and on again (esp the router). Both mine and MrsTT's router seem to play 'silly buggers' every now and then - which is cured by a power cycle...

[underground]

Plenty of times Tom! In the past a reset of the network card was needed occasionally but this is literally - turn on wireless, lose everything.

[slackline]

What router is it? Make & model.

Look up the manual here or find it online somewhere if its not listed. Simpler if you still have it!

Get a wired connection and point a browser at something like http://192.168.1.1 or http://192.168.1.100 (should tell you in the manual).  If you've never tinkered with it, then the default username/password should get you in.

Things to try/check

Check what the connected devices are and the assigned IP address'.  These will have MAC address' and possibly hostnames (if you've given your computer a name) associated with each IP address.  Try dropping your laptop if connected.

Check how IP address' are assigned, easiest is to have this as DHCP (dynamic).  Make sure your laptop is setup to get an IP address in this manner.

If this isn't working you can use static and you'd do this based on the MAC address.

I think you can get MAC address's under windows from a command prompt/terminal with

Code: [Select]

ipconfig /a

Assign this a static IP on your router, but leave the laptop as dynamic as it accepts what its offered which will be the static IP from the router that you've set.

[Lund]

It's unlikely (although possible) that your actual internet connection is dropping - i.e. the connection to the outside world from your router.

DHCP is very unlikely to be the issue too; it's probably just a generic error message when the connection gets scrambly and things don't work.

What's much more likely is that the wireless internet from your laptop to your router is shite.  If you look for wireless networks, how many crop up?  (They might be invisible anyway, so that's not a sufficient condition, but it's a good indicator.)  You should probably try changing the channel that the router is broadcasting the radio signal on - try a few: use trial and error to see if it improves things...

If it's fine via a cable, then DHCP isn't likely to be the culprit (you use that over wireline too).

[slackline]

DHCP can have problems if an IP address isn't released and the router thinks a device is still attached and there are no more free IP address' to assign so I wouldn't discount it completely.  Checking with a cabled connection won't necessarily reveal this as most devices have different MAC address' for different network interfaces (PS3's being an exception to this).

In addition to scanning and checking the signal strength from the laptop, if you've an Android phone get the free "Wifi Analyzer" application from the market place and use it to scan what wifi access points are around and see what channels each are using, it will also recommend an alternative channel where you might get better signal strength.  Generally most routers use the middle range of channels and because the upper few channels aren't legal in the US (I think > 11) they tend not to use these by default, so try one of the high channels if you've not got use of the Wifi Analyser under Android.

If signal strength is an issue consider getting longer aerials for your router, its a simple way of boosting the strength.  Or repositioning the router maybe.

[Jim]

could also be the firmware of the router/wifi card need updating, my O2 router used to drop every now and again until they updated the firmware on it and hasn't dropped since.
Are there any cordless phones or any other sort of device that could be interfering with it close by?

[underground]

Thanks for the replies, slackers might be onto something with running out of ip addresses.
However, take the laptop out of the equation- the signal is always good and used to connect always really quickly.

The router has a switch to turn wireless ap on/off. Last night with it off, desktop pc with wired connection was sweet. On, though, it seemed to break the connections, even the one between the router and the pc Ethernet card, joined by a wire

[slackline]

Its exceptionally difficult to troubleshoot at a distance, but I would highly recommend getting into the administration web-pages of the router itself and checking how things are configured/whats going on.

See above for links to the manual etc.

[Jim]

have you 'hard-reset' the router? ie revert back to factory settings.
might be a pain to set everything up again but definately worth a shot if not done already