Wireless router

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My family uses a wireless router with the internet connection. The past month, our connection drops around 5-10 times a day. There are no outages in our area, no weather to blame and no one is working on wires.

Is it normal for disconnects to happen that frequently, given the router used?

 

No I would say - never experienced that. What router do you got and what OS do you use?

 

What's the average signal strength when it's working? If the usual signal strength is low, it's not strange for the connection to drop.

Wireless networks communicate via high-frequency radio waves. Any sort of interference may also cause the connection to fail.

 

Like cell phones(?) and wireless phones and such

 

When did you disconnect the power from the router for a night last time?

You should keep it off and unplugged for 8 hours at least once a week.

 

You mean...it's not suppose to be up 24/7? (You can take that as a 'no'.)

 

Yes, it is supposed to be up 24/7. I do not understand why you should keep it powered off for 8 hours?!?

Some low-end devices might get "stuck" once in a while due to poor design/software under certain conditions (constant heavy load for one). A simple reboot solves this problem.

But in this case it would appear to be line problems or something similiar. Hard to say more without details about the problem and setup.

 

I run XP; the connection is DSL; this dropping stuff began about 2 months ago. Before that, the connection was fairly stable with only a reboot about every 2 weeks.

 

Erod... ever had serious router trouble?

While I admit it doesn't *theoretically* have to be turned off at all - most routers, especially cheap ones, cannot handle that.

The 8 hours is a "safe value" - most routers can handle just 30 minutes, and 4 hours should be enough for any router.

Nonetheless, it can solve a variety of problems, and keep others from developing.

(Note: My router is under heavy load most of the time, so of course, YMMV.)

 

Kuemper, I have similar problems. We called the internet provider, and they told me how to reset the modem and router. Basically, you unplug both from the power and each other. Wait 30 seconds, then plug the modem back in. Wait until you see the top four lights (power, send, recieve, and activity), then plug the router into the wall and the modem into that.

Of course, that is with comcast and linksys. If you don't have that, I doubt it will work. But when in doubt, call the company.

 

That's what I call 'reboot' and my hubby calls 'power cycling'.

 

After much discussion with hubby, it's been decided the phone cord is the problem and not the router. Now we just need to talk the in-laws into either a) getting a DSL jack downstairs, or b) buying enough cap 5 cable to make the connection sound.