Wireless Adaptor Dropping Connection...

WetDaddy

I've a wireless network set up in my house with 3 PC's on it.

Occasionally (and seemingly randomly), my PC drops the connection. The other PC's, however, have no problems at all. I'm relatively new to wireless networking, although I have learned a fair bit about it recently and my knowledge of basic networking is pretty good.

I thought it may have been the beacon, but then I suppose that would mean there's a problem with the router and as I mentioned above, there's no problem with the other PC's. The other thing is that we've moved house recently and this problem has been evident in BOTH premises, even when the router's been physically right beside my adaptor, so I doubt it's a signal strength issue.

Other info is that we've all got assigned IPs and I'm also using DHCP. There's 64-bit WEP encryption on it too, and it's a modem router (Linksys Gateway dealy). My adaptor is a relatively non-descript "802.11g Wireless LAN PCI" card manufactured by "Ralink Technology". I bought it off Komplett about 8 months back.

Anyone any suggestions? I could have left out important info, so let me know that too!

Thanks in advance!

Cal

Are all the pc's on wireless cards and if so are they the same brand card?

Cal

Karoma

As above.

Try the card that is having the issue in another computer?

WetDaddy

One PC is a wireless card, one is a USB dongle. And in the past, I had a laptop with a PCMCIA wireless card.

Haven't tried my own wireless card in another machine yet, because it's not causing *that* much trouble, you know? It's just a bit frustrating and I'm eager to learn Also, I was thinking it might be a common problem to do with settings...?

Cal

Well you could try looking for other wireless interference (home mobile phones etc.) or get the latest firmware & drivers, but quite often this comes down to poor compatibility between different manufacturers. I've found the most stable networks are made up of single brand hardware. And the most unstable being cheap unmatched equiptment or just duff kit.


Cal.

Karoma

It really is difficult to say what the issue is.. The first step really is to move the card to the other PC. If you have issues - it would help indicate whether the problem is with the card (Incompatible, b0rked..) or the machine (OS issue, software issue, config issue, power issue...).
Even if it's only proving to be small inconvenience, it might be worth your time and money doing it before the warranty on the card runs out (If it's only a 1 year job). Until then, check for an updated driver for the card, and perhaps firmware for the router..

WetDaddy

Alirght, cheers for the advice guys. Will try out ye're suggestions and if there's any light shed on it, I'll post it here.

Oh, and thanks for the speedy response too!

qBot

You could try using the latest ralink drivers. I have a Belkin F5D7000 which kept dropping connections on me. Turns out it was because of the dodgy drivers that Belkin released. Eventually I stumbled on these ralink drivers released by the chipset makers themselves. They stopping the card dropping connection and added features like WPA2 to them. I got them here at the ralinktech website. But its down at the moment so I can't give you a direct link to the drivers themselves.

Karoma

http://www.ralinktech.com/supp-1.htm