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The cable company says a lot of people have the same problems who have PCs connected by a router. (I'm not sure if they were referring to all routers or just the wireless ones.)
Any suggestions on the best way to set up the PCs to share a connection to the Internet? I hate to pay for a second cable service for downstairs, but I'd rather do that than lose the connection 10 times a day.
Any ideas would be appreciated.
What kind of signal strength are you showing for your wireless connection? Does this vary a lot? Have you played with the antenna orientation on any devices that have antennae to see if you can boost signal strength?
Cable companies don't like routers, BTW, and will blame most anything that goes wrong on your router. Linksys has phone support, and they might be able to help you if you can narrow things down a bit.
[edited by: rogerd at 9:34 pm (utc) on Jan. 16, 2004]
The cable company says a lot of people have the same problems who have PCs connected by a router.
The cable company, as usual, is lying. Your issue could be any number of things, you'll have to be methodical and troubleshoot accordingly:
1. Check out online user forums specific to your router - make sure you have the firmware they recommend - ask about any known issues.
2. Check the signal strength on your cable modem's maintenance page - most cable disconnects are due to upstream or downstream power problems.
3. Get a cabel line tech to come out and thoroughly test your lines, the drop, etc.
[edited by: bcolflesh at 9:40 pm (utc) on Jan. 16, 2004]
The popular small hand held two way radios also will interfere with your network.
Also, you may want to check for obsticles between each transcever. Depending on how many walls, pipes, etc that are between each station, you may want to move things around to get a stronger signal.
Try downloading a sniffer program to see how strong your signal is for each computer, it may also detect signals that are causing interference.
*added - I had my cable company run new wire from the pole to my wall outlet. (I tore out all of the wire prior to install, I know I'm evil but my signal is great!)
I bought the same equipment, and can't get it to work either. I hooked everything up according to the instructions. When I hook up my laptop with the wireless card, i get EXCELLENT signal strength. However, it won't work. I try to use Internet Explorer and I just get error messages. The signal is there, but I can't use it.
I use my laptop all the time at several WiFi hotspots, so I know the problem isn't with the laptop.
When i go into the Local Area Connection Status, it goes up to 57 packets sent and Zero packets received and just hangs up there.
When I'm on a WiFi connection that works fine, the SENT and RECEIVED just keep going up.
Any Suggestions?
Kids - on third floor - are happy as claims. Stronger signal. Faster downloads. No cut offs.
Son thought Linksys sucked based on spotty performance of original router. He heard me call Linksys, ask the tech rep "what is your very best router" and we went right out and bought it. He now thinks Linksys knows what they are doing.
I'm happy when the kids are happy and they are very happy.
When I hooked up a new laptop, it was able to access my network but not the Internet. Another 45-minute trial & error session with Linksys phone support cleared that one up, too.
There are multiple points of failure in the process - the key thing is to identify which one is causing the problem. Easy to say, but sometimes this take a while.
...and then both PCs lose the cable connection
How do you "loose" a cable connection?
I use cable and aside from service being down (rarely) , I'm always connected... even when the computer is not turned on, I'm connected. Isn't that what cable is about? I'm not try to be snide, just don't understand your statement.
<added>
Guess I'm lucky, because my Linksys router was/is plug'n play, meaning I never had to call any support at all.
We don't get access to the Internet anymore - all of the URL requests put into the browsers get not found just like when the cable service goes out. We have to shut down both computers, turn the power off, unplug the cable so it resets and wait a couple of minutes and then turn everything on and then the connection is back.
I don't know technically what happens, but this is what the cable reps have us do and it works as a short term fix. However longterm I don't want to have to go through this all of the time.
FYI - You can also lose access if somebody else is using the same IP as your router gets assigned. Evidently some guy hard coded one of the cable company's IP addresses into some piece of equipment he had. He used an IP address that normally gets randomly assigned to customer routers. So recently we got assigned this IP for the first time and everytime he would log on we would lose our cable connection. I called the cable company to find out why our cable kept going out even after I had disconnected the Linksys router. Evidently they have some way of tracing all this at cable company HQ. They figured out what he had done and then disconnected his cable service. :)
Check the following:
If the router can take an external antenna, use one. The ones that mount on the wall might do the trick.
If replacing the router, get one with a higher output - the information is rarely printed on the box. e.g. at work they threw out a Netgear MR314 (I caught it) and replaced it with a Cisco Aironet access point. From memory, most are 20 mW while the powerful ones are 100 mW.
The duplicate IP address down the street is a possibility. Power down the modem and power on after a few minutes.
Check for any video senders (TV extenders) and cordless phones on 2.4 GHz. I have one a metre apart and they are fine.
Ash
The problem with the IP happened just for a couple of days days when our router got assigned an IP address somebody else had assigned to a piece of their personal equipment. That problem got corrected when the cable company disconnected the IP abscounder's service. I just gave that as another example of how your connection can be lost even if you have cable in response to the question in the previous thread.
Alas, the wireless problems remain, but we have not tried all of your suggestions in this thread yet. For now we ended up disconnecting the wireless router and only hook it up when we need an Internet connection downstairs.
Thanks for all the tips. I'll go over them with my husband and let you know if any work out for us.
Does the wireless router have a network plugs on it? (most do). What is the make/model number?
Do you have cordless phones in the house?
Prior to getting the new WAP, we'd been suffering some of the problems reported in this thread:
-- all computers on our home LAN losing access to the Net (usually when something like a laptop that's normally powered off was booted up; eg. anything that caused another internal IP address to be allocated.)
-- poor performance via wireless; extreme variations in signal strength, despite having gotten full strength signal when the WAP was initially installed 1-1.5 years ago.
New WAP works great and was far easier to install than our original Linksys WAP (version 1).
Our router's 2 or 3 years old now and is running strong, but we've also gone through one cable modem in that span of time. The old modem developed an inability to keep a connection, and would frequently drop into it's signal retraining/reacquisition mode for no reason.
Positioning of the WAP and your wireless devices is important, as well... our WAP and router are upstairs. The WAP is on a desk right near the doorway, and has almost a clear line of sight to our downstairs living room (via a staircase and landing). We can connect to the WAP anywhere inside our home, except the garage, and we get a good connection from our small backyard deck if we're positioned correctly.
And do lock down your WAP and LAN access! I can see both of my next door neighbors' wireless LAN's when I'm downstairs, depending on which portion of the house I'm in. I've never tried to access them, but my guess is they're wide open to the world, like my parents' (who are reasonably tech savvy) was until I lectured them. Won't deter real hackers, but it just makes sense not to tempt the WORLD.
Sorry you had to shell out the $$ for the new router, but glad that solved the problem!
Like I said, I was in the same boat not long ago. Wished I'd just picked up a new router sooner, rather than suffering the frustration of fiddling with the dying one!
It works better than i would have dreamed. I get an excellent signal at 54mbps anywhere in my house. The router is on the third level of my 4,000 sq ft. house and i still get an excellent signal on floor one and two.
I was sure i was going to need a booster in-between to get to the bottom level. But, it just works perfectly. Tomorrow I'm going to see how far away from my front door i can get. I guess i should worry about my neighbors.
Right now, i have the cable modem into the router, and a cable from the router to my desktop. Then, i have wireless cards in the other four computers in my house. If i'm worried about my neighbors picking up the signal, what should i do?
Should I run the cable directly into my secured desktop, then to the router? I'm almost afraid to touch it since it's working so good.
I've got a lot to learn about this stuff. Thanks for everyones help.
