Need help - wireless router disconnecting computers

[bokep]

So the situation is... we got 4 computers in our house all connected to the wireless router -> dsl modem. 2 computers in the house would keep getting disconnected many times during the day, but the other 2 stay online just fine. the 2 that are disconnecting are running winxp, the 2 that are fine are running vista and mac osx. i don't know if that makes any difference because the 4 years i was using xp i've never had this problem. also the 2 xp computers can connect to our neighbours' network just fine, but not ours.

is there a setting somewhere in the router or the modem that could lead to this? i'm not very good with networking so i don't really know. maybe the dhcp settings?

right now the set up is phone jack -> dsl modem -> lan 1 port of wireless router -> 4 computers. i'm using the lan 1 port to connect the router to the modem because if i try to use the WAN port none of our computers would get internet. i don't know how that works. we've moved in a month ago and i still can't figure this out. i tried using a different router but for some reason that one stopped working overnight after working fine the day before.

[Phils]

If you're running DSL, does that mean you're on Sympatico?
I realize that the router provides the internal ip address for the computers attached to it but is it possible that they are limiting the numbers of computers that can connect to them and that's what you're seeing? They've been making all sorts of changes on their network in the past few months.

[RenegadeX]

I had the same problem. I have 5 computers in my house - 2 wired, 3 wireless, all fed through a Linksys wireless router, located in the basement. One computer in an upstairs bedroom (furthest away from the router) uses a Microsoft USB wireless adapter and was always rock-solid; a wireless computer in the basement 20ft away from the router uses a Linksys USB wireless adpater and was frequently unstable, and a notebook in the family room running on a Belkin PCMIA aircard was for the longest time completely unstable - disconnecting every 5 minutes or so. Then in the summer my brother came to stay with me and brought his notebook with built-in wireless. All of a sudden, the normally rock-solid computer upstairs began to disconnect every few minutes, and for that matter - as did all the other wireless computers including his.

First thing we tried was to change the Channel setting. If you go into your router's setup page (192.168.1.1 perhaps) there should be an option to change the channel. Start on Channel 1 and test it out for a while. If that's no better, try Channel 2. Go through all the available channels until you find one that's stable.

2nd thing to try - give your router a unique SSID (network name). If your router's default SSID is called "linksys" for example, and your neighbours also use that name as they also have linksys routers and never got around to changing from the default, their computers may automatically try connecting to it -- more work for your router, and I assume possibly something that could interrupt your otherwise stable wireless connection.

3rd thing to try - if you're not already, try setting each computer to use an assigned IP address (192.168.1.201, 192.168.1.202, etc) rather than the default "automatic" configuration. Tip: Write down each computer's IP assignment on a stick-it note and stick it to the bottom of your router for future reference, should the need arise.

4th thing to try - change the IP address of your router itself. If the default is 192.168.1.1, try changing the last digit (ex: 192.168.1.100). Of course you have to change the "default gateway" setting on each computer's TCP/IP config to match.

Where I was once ready to throw my Linksys router into the garbage out of frustration, I have rock-solid connections on all my wireless computers. For me, it took all 4 changes to get 6 computers (4 wireless) operating smoothly, but your mileage my vary.

[bokep]

thanks for the help renegadex, i followed some of those instructions and it worked like a charm for the past couple days before it finally gave up again today.

what i did was:
i made my modem 192.168.1.1 as the dhcp server and turned off the dhcp server on my router. connected modem to lan 4 port of my router. made my router 192.168.1.2. there was also a setting in my router for my wan port and that was automatically assigned as 192.168.1.3.

out of nowhere earlier today everyone in the house got disconnected. i looked under my modem settings, it said it had only been connected for a few minutes so i figure the connection was down momentarily. then i looked into my router setting and under status it said the WAN IP is gone. i kept trying to renew IP to no avail.

so i tried restarting everything, assigned a unique IP to everyone, still didn't work.

i also tried to switch it around, making my modem relay dhcp server to 192.168.1.2 (my router) and have my router as the dhcp server, but for some reason my router wouldnt assign anyone any IPs.

this is beyond frustrating...

when i go to available wireless networks, there are 13-14 networks around, and sometimes there are only 8-9 because the signal of the others are really low. is it possible that there is way too many networks around and that's disturbing mine? i think there's only 11 channels you can use in north america and if all of them are taken around here does that mean im not able to use wireless?

[Dave98]

As a general rule, the three best wireless channels to use are 1, 6, and 11 because they are the three "non-overlapping" channels. It basically means they don't really interfere with each other. It's best to use the channel that is free but just because there is a network already present on a particular channel, it doesn't mean your network won't work. It just means theres more of a chance for interference. Try some out and see what happens.

[x86asm]

I had the same issue with my BEFW11S4 and tried most of the stuff suggested and it still didnt work. So in frustration, I just bought a refurbed WRT54GX2, never looked back. The range extender on this thing is quite effective. Upstairs in my room, I can get decent signal strength (> 85%) while my old Linksys would give at best maybe 60%.

[Timaeus]

Have you got a 2.4 ghz cordless phone?

Timaeus

[bokep]

Have you got a 2.4 ghz cordless phone?

Timaeus

yep there's one in the house that we just brought over after thanksgiving

edit: nope it's 900mhz