i have a linksys wireless router, worked perfectly for years. now the wifi connection randomly drops once or twice a day (not every ten minutes as other folks report), at which point my laptop cannot see my network.
reset usually does the trick, which i've been doing - but that's annoying. now, i may have found the issue...
i've noticed my neighbors have networks now as well. this was a surprise once, when i realized i was no longer on my *home* network -- but on my neighbors connection! so i've disabled auto connect to non-preferred networks (have to manually surf for open networks when traveling - but that's fine), set my neighbor's entry to "manual" connect, to prevent connecting there.
ok - solved that side issue (or did i?) --linksys would still drop my connection. my laptop would see the neighbor's networks, but still not list mine.
so-- i've been either resetting the linksys, which usually works, and/or resetting the wifi on the laptop -- some combination thereof brings it back. i've been blaming linksys here, grumbling about just getting a new router (and upgrade) -- knowing my other laptop works fine, clearly i have not pinpointed the problem. might not be the router at all.
it's gotten annoying enough, time to thumb around online again and see what people are talking about.
i've read various reports about disabling IEEE 802.1x authentication (already disabled), and enabling the SSID broadcast (custom name) for the network -- already do that, so no help there. (btw, masking a network ssid gains little in the way of protection, plus i like having my wifi associate promptly, there's my $0.02 on that).
hunting online i found two possible solutions that i'm testing out right now.
[1] disable the auto/power save feature on the intel centrino chipset. based on the behavior, this seems rather promising. power-save issues make sense, because it can mess up a lot of hardware - maybe the driver gets out of sync, who knows.
here's how to do that :
go to system properties
hardware
device manager
network adapters
intel pro/wireless 2200gb network
properties
advanced
power management
disable auto checkbox, and set to mode to "high"
so far so good, no random network drops. though i'm getting an occasional connection message-- to the network i'm already on. maybe it's hiccupping, but reconnecting, rather than outright failing.
[2] turn off the wireless zero configuration service (net stop wzcsvc). you do this after getting connected, and don't want to switch networks.
haven't tried this one yet, but looks useful. might use this when i'm happily ensconced in my environment. need to remember to turn back on when switching networks? so i'm not sure now i feel about that - for a long term solution. maybe i can always just manually scan and connect on demand, that doesn't seem so bad.
will take some time to thoroughly test out these scenarios.
{update}
even reseting the router isn't fixing (temporarily albeit) this anymore. given this behavior it's seems the router is simply suffering from long term heat death.
solution: **get a new router**
i found one at fry's for about $25 on sale. upgrading gives me a few new features, like using 802.11g.
other than transfering a bunch of settings to the new router -- this problem is closed.