Stupid router tricks

[kate_nepveu]

This weekend I installed a Belkin N Wireless Router (F5D8233-4). (Our old router required rebooting every eight hours of running BitTorrent, which was tedious.) It's working fine for Chad, who's directly plugged into it through an Ethernet cable, but I'm experiencing annoying wireless connection disruptions.

Specifically, connecting to the Internet starts timing out; I click on Windows XP's little Wireless Network Connection Status icon, and in the resulting dialog box I see the name for the network flickering off and on (the name itself), and the speed jumping between 54.0 Mbps to 1.0 Mbps. Clicking "repair" fixes this, for a while, or sometimes it comes back on its own; in two hours this has happened at least six times, while I did nothing other than surf the web.

I pretty much installed this with the defaults, except for enabling encryption (128bit WEP) and setting up a forwarded port for torrenting. We have DSL, so PPPoE, but since Chad's having no problems I doubt the problem's on that end. My laptop has b/g wireless; the router also supports the draft n standard, because Chad's new tablet does. The user manual is not helpful. Does anyone have any suggestions of what settings to futz with or other troubleshooting to do?

Comments

[montoya.livejournal.com]

I have no useful information other than to advise you to make sure you've upgraded the firmware to the latest version. There's so much flakiness with wireless stuff that it's the single most frustrating technology I ever use, and one of the few where I sometimes just throw my hands up in the air and give up.

[montoya.livejournal.com]

Also, as a diagnostic procedure, it's worth turning off security and seeing if it works in the clear first. (And when you turn security back on, unless you have a very compelling reason, you should be using WPA, which is easier to use than WEP and also infinitely more secure.)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Agreed. If you can handle 802.11G, you can handle WPA, and WPA, unlike WEP, will actually keep people out of your network.

So, yeah. Upgrade firmware. Upgrade wireless card drivers. If you're using Windows Wireless Zero Configuration Service, try using the manufacturer's connection program. If you're using a manufacturer's program, try WZCS. Google the problem, and try *downgrading* the wireless drivers on your machine to see if that helps, if there's a version a few months older for your hardware.

[skapusniak.livejournal.com]

See if there's anything listed under (takes a deep breath before telling you how to get tere)

Right Click menu of Wireless Connection icon
Status
Properties Button
General Tab
Configure
Advanced Tab

...that looks like has anything to do with connection speed. My wireless interface would keep trying to regnegotiate to get the 'best speed', causing it to jump around all over the place and randomly fall over, until I manually told it to stop trying to do that and stick to 54Mbps. Rate/54, rather than Rate/Best Speed on that advanced tab my wireless interface, but it'll be specific to the wireless interface hardware if you have such an option at all.

Also if there are other peoples wireless networks about, try changing the wireless channel used by the router to one that none of the others are using rather than sticking with the default.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

If your wireless card has an option to minimize power use, turn that 'feature' off. Yeah, it'll shorten your battery life, but it'll also make the thing quit trying to use less power to maintain the signal (which causes seesawing, except it looks like yours never goes back on the upswing).

[kate_nepveu]

That, at least, is set to the lowest setting and always has been.

[kate_nepveu]

No, I've got a transmit power, but nothing about connection speed. But I wonder if the router is trying to do something like that--I can't see anything obvious in the settings, but I will poke at it some more when I'm not running to work.

And yeah, might as well change the channel, though it was never a problem before.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

Try disabling it entirely. It might seem odd that it worked okay with the old router (linksys? dlink? netgear?), but I have yet to meet a wireless AP that didn't have some point of "Hey, this bit of the spec is a bit vague, let's implement it in a way like no one else anywhere EVER!" suckage.

[kate_nepveu]

I tried WPA first and for some reason I couldn't get all the machines in the house to connect with it (I think it was Chad's tablet that was the problem here).

I have horrible wireless-security-fu.

But I'll put it on the list.

[kate_nepveu]

Thank you.

(Also, ugh.)

[kate_nepveu]

Doesn't seem to be an option to do that; it's a slide-bar.

And it does sometimes go on the upswing if I leave it alone long enough, I just get impatient.

The old router was linksys, I think.

Note to self; this morning the "wireless" light on the router was flickering too. Check if this is a sign of problems w/the router putting out a wireless signal (presumably) or with it finding something to accept a wireless signal.

[angelhedgie.livejournal.com]

Also, most routers ship on channel 6. Try switching that to channel 1 or 11 - since most people ignore this, those two frequencies tend to be relatively empty of traffic.

Also, please, please tell me you changed the router's SSID (the name of the router that it broadcasts)?

[angelhedgie.livejournal.com]

A bit more explanation on the channels:

While we have, in theory 11 channels to play with, in reality they're close enough in frequency to each other so that they bleed into each other. Only 1, 6, and 11 are far enough apart that they don't interfere which each other. So remember - there are only three channels on a wireless router.

[kate_nepveu]

It defaults to 11, and yes.

I may have played with a random setting that eased the problem; I haven't been online for a lengthy period since then so I'm not sure. I just wish I remember what now.

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

I am now allowed to say *professionally* "We don't support wireless except unencrypted", and even that only reluctantly. Wireless is nice when it works, but it's unreliable crap a lot of the time, especially on any consumer-level device (which even Belkin is).

[kate_nepveu]

It amazes me the extent to which this is true. In theory, should it be this bad?

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

Even theoretically, it's very low-power radio on a highly contested band where you're picking up signals that are below the noise floor only due to some extremely clever techniques -- which is as reliable as it sounds. The band is affected by nearby microwave emitters, varying from microwave ovens through every single wireless device out there (baby monitors, remote video devices, etc.etc.) to the microwave-range "we've taken up a spot on the tallest building around and we'll give you line of sight internet from it" providers, it's affected (a lot) by concrete floors and walls (which typically have grounded reinforcement grids), etc.

The wireless modems I'm now supporting (Zyxel 2602s, for the cognoscenti -- the C61/C63 models and the newer D1A/D3A) have an alleged failure mode where if you put them in a confined space, the reflections back to the antenna cause the entire networking module to crash on a regular basis, including the wired sections. That's presumably a design flaw, but just to say -- it can be a lot worse than simply not getting a connection.

WEP/WPA have their very own entertaining failure modes, which I'm lucky enough to be mostly ignorant of -- but I did get one customer just today who had two separate wireless clients, neither of which could see the modem's network on-air -- until I disabled the security.

Personally, unless I've got an actual portable device, I prefer a cable.

[kate_nepveu]

That makes sense, thanks, and makes me a little less grumpy about the troubles I'm having.