Wireless connection keeps dropping

I've just set up a wireless network using a D-Link 614 wireless router and I'm not able to keep a connection for more than a few minutes without having to reconnect. I have updated the firmware on the router. I have a O2Micro OZ6912 adapter which I have yet to find a driver update for. The installed driver is from 7/1/2001.

My connection shows excellent signal strength and works like a champ for about three minutes. Any suggestions for keeping my signal until I'm ready to disconnect it?

Thanks for the help.

 

LAN or internet or both?

What operating system(s)?

 

Yea - that might be helpful...

I'm running XP on the laptop and 2000 on the desktop. It's the laptop that keeps dropping the internet connection.

 

Let me know when ya figure it out.

I know of several people with the same problem.
My internal WIFI card does it but my DLink PCMCIA card works fine!
I think it's diffrent equipment not being compatable with each other.

 

Apparantly it's my 2.4Ghz wireless phone. They tend to use the same frequencies. I'm trying to find a channel on my router that will not interfere. This could be a long process.

 

Just listen to the phone and when the loud clicking noise goes away you off of it. But I don't think thats the problem.

 

Did you try unchecking 802.1x authentication in XP?

 

I'll try unchecking the authentication. I finally switched my phone to channel 31 and my router to 1 and have had pretty good luck. I wasn't noticing any clicking on the phone at any point though. I'll leave it running longer today and see if I've solved the problem.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

Hi all: I was just getting ready to write a post on this issue when I read this one so I thought I might just chime in.

I have the D-link 614+ wireless access point and two computers with their 520+ wireless PCI network cards. All are running XP Home.

I'll call the computer attached to the access point the host and the other two with the 520+ cards Client 1 and Client 2. Client 1 is about 6 ft. away from the access point in direct line of sight. Client 2 is about 25 ft away, must penetrate 2, maybe 3 wood stud walls.

Both client computers connect effortlessly to the DSL Broadband through the 614+ and mousing over the systray icon indicates connected at 22mbs and "Signal Strength: Excellent"

But at client 2, the one that is 25 ft away, after connecting at 22 mbs and downloading files at about 83 kB per sec. for a short while, starts getting slower and slower. Mousing over the systray icon shows at first: "signal strength: Excellent" and "connected at 22mbs" then, 11mbs, then 2mbs, then 1.2 mbs, then 1mbs. All while reporting "Signal Stregth Excellent "

D-link support, no help that I can find, Techs there very impatient, either because they don't know or they don't care. One says, "it is a networking problem, you are using Microsoft's network, call them." That may be the case, but since I just bought $300+ of D-Link's equipment, I thought that they could have been a little more helpful than that.

But, I digress. The question is, what is happening here and is it correctible??

 

Buffer filling up would be my guess.

Control Panel~System~Hardware~Device Manager. Right click on each communications port listed, and select Properties. Click the Port Settings tab. The Bits per Second setting should be at least 115,200 and the Flow control should be set to Hardware.

Next, click the Advanced button and select Use FIFO buffers and move the Receive and Transmit Buffer sliders as high as they can go. You can lower them again if you need to but I wouldn't expect that to be necessary.

Make sure the NICs are set to 100Mbps full duplex rather than Auto.

 

Newt: Thanks so much for helping on this, these settings are a mystery to me, as I have never even seen them before. I'll list them and see if you can help me get it right.

On the host computer, D-Link PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter, wire connected to the D-Link 614+ Wireless Network Access Point, the following settings are available at the advanced tab, connection type:

Auto Negotiation
100BTX Full Duplex
100BTX Half Duplex
10BT Full Duplex
10BT Half Duplex

The connection type was set at Auto Negotiation, I changed the setting to 100BTX Full Duplex as per my understanding of your instruction.

The setting: Validate Packet Length is set at: enable.

Com Port 1 & 2 were set at 9600/auto, I changed those settings to 128000/Hardware. I made these same changes to the two client computers. All were set to use FIFO and the sliders were all the way to the right.

On the client computers the settings on the wireless adapters are:

Antennae RX: Both
Antennae TX: Antennae 1
Authentication Mode: Open Authentication
Desired Basic Rate Set: 1,2 Mbps
Desired BSS Type: Infrastructure
Desired Channel: 6
Desired SSID: Default
Desired Supported Rate Set: 1,2,5.5,11
Desired TX Rate: Auto
ELP Support: Disabled
Fragmentation Threshold: 4096
Leap Enabled: Disabled
LeapUserName tiwlan
Mode4X on
Power Mode: Continuous Access Mode
RTS Threshold 4095
Short Preamble Off
WEP Option WEP Disabled

Since I have no idea what I am doing, I changed the following settings:

Desired Basic Rate Set from 1,2Mbps to: 1,2,5.5,11Mbps
Desired Supported Rate Set from 1,2,5.5,11Mbps to: 1,2,5.5,11,22Mbps

When accessing the internet from client computer 2, the "connected at:" drops from 22Mbps to 11 to 2 to 1, and then it will go back to 22. When it indicates 1, pages just don't load or so slow they don't appear to be loading. When at 22, the pages load extremely fast. I'm still studying client 2, but it seems if the connection speed drops to 1, it only increases back to 22 if I stop the current download and start connecting to the page a second time. I'm not sure this is happening everytime, more attempts needed.

Would you be kind enough to comment on these changes and suggest how all of these settings might be best tweaked?

Really appreciate your help. Love this board.

Martin

 

I am sure of the first few settings you changed and you did exactly right for the NIC speed and the port speeds/flow/etc.

The rest is very iffy and will depend on what works best on your system. You'll have to play around with settings and find out what gives you the best results.

So we'll both know what we are talking about:
- Fragmentation refers to breaking packets into smaller pieces if they are too large for your system to handle efficiently
- RTS/CTS is Request to Send/Clear to Send and provides the PCs a way to say if they are ready for more data or not. Only used by the device if a packet is larger than the Fragmentation Threshold.
- Basic Rate - this one confuses me a little but I think you did the right thing since those are the speed values for transmit/receive by your wireless access point (AP).

DLink defaults to nearly twice the fragmentation and RTS thresholds that Linksys uses on one of their wireless devices. Not sure but they may be too high. Take a look Here for a brief discussion of meaning and settings for those and several others.

Another good fragmentation/RTS/CTS discussion is Here with some ideas that should help. Also several links to how-to articles for tweaking your settings. Again, their recommended settings are way lower than the Dlink defaults.

Do you have an advanced setting Auto Rate Fall Back on your AP?

 

Hey Newt: thanks for the input. I am just so tired, been working on these wireless connections all day, Client computer 2 stopped connnecting for no apparent reason, I tried everything in the book and no dice. All the settings were the same on 1 and 2, just 2 refused to connect no matter what. Uninstalled, reinstalled, went through the wizards a dozen times, No Dice.

In desperation I called MSFT, after an hour and a half on the phone, the tech there had no better luck than I did, suggested re-install of windows. Nuts to that.

Somewhere there was a corrupted file. On techs suggestion, I uninstalled NAV, ran SFC /scannow with XP CD in drive on all three machines, starting with the host.

After starting scannow, got repeated error messages that CD could not be read. Tech told me to select try again each time error message appeared. I did, at least 50 times on each machine.

After all were done, shut down, rebooted, all machines connected without being touched.

So, I'm going to walk away from them now until tomorrow when I'll check out the links you posted.

As near as I can tell, looking at all the settings on the wireless access point, I don't see an advanced setting Auto Rate Fall Back on the AP. I'll look harder tomorrow.

Thanks again.

Martin

 

I got the darn thing working, but, for how long, I wouldn't even want to guess. It least, the connections haven't dropped out in the last 24 hours. Just wait and see.

I followed Newt's links and have discovered a lot of good information on how the packets are transmitted/received and at least have some knowlege where a vacum existed before.

I'm sure now that my 2.4GHZ wireless telephones are creating some of the problems. I'm going to try some channel switching and see if that helps. I am getting pops and clicks on the phones, I figure a sure indication of interference.

If I discover a fix for this I'll post back.

Thanks Newt.

Martin

 

Hope not to get in the way. I had a network recently where I was installing 'g' equipment. The computers on the network were of all different ages.

The first computer they wanted the wireless installed on was an older 400 Mhz AMD K6-2 Gateway. I couldn't keep a connection here for any period of time or of any quality. I was about to give up when I opted to try one of the newer machines and the card worked perfectly.

A 2.4 Ghz phone system seemed to cause some effects, but I couldn't get a connection when the gateway and the router were 5 ft. away.

Will older computer BIOS cause these kinds of problem with wireless connectivity? That was my final thought here. I updated the BIOS on this machine, however the problem remained. Anyone agree or disagree with my diagnosis and is there a work around?

I was able to hook all the other computers up right out of the box with no adjustments. The components were all D-Link.

Any thoughts appreciated? Hope I'm not interupting, Thanks,

 

euphonius/Mike - dang it. Stop apologizing for posting.

Your comments are good and appropriate. These threads are not "owned" by whoever started them.

 

Hi Mike: Hey, don't worry about getting in the way, this board is about helping, so if posting in an ongoing thread helps you, that's the thing to do.

I wish I could answer your question, but I have three networked with D-link wireless (614 access point, 520+ PCI cards) all machines running XP, slowest processor 1,000GHz, smallest memory 256mb ddr, and I have continuing drop out problems. To the best of my extremely limited knowledge, all settings are at max.

Like I said earlier, I spent hours on the 'phone with MSFT and D-Link, so many changed settings from install mode I just can't remember them all. At least in my case, distance and direction from the access point seems to be the culprit.

Seems the signal has trouble penetrating walls with metal studs when the penetration is at a very shallow angle. The machine I'm having trouble with is about 25 ft away, but signal from the access point must travel through the wall at an angle of about 2 degrees, almost parrelel with the wall which means it has to go through a lot of studs to get there.

D-Link says send them another $75.00 for a repeater. I may just do that to stop the aggrevation of the connection dropping speeds, sometimes down to 1mb per sec, which is totally useless.

I hope you can find a soulution to your problem.

Martin

 

Exactly the same issue and same setup (almost). Also have a Dlink router. I think your phone is a red herring as I don't have one and see the same issue. I ran network stumbler to try and get a better picture of what is happening. It is actually still seeing the AP. I'm sure if you download it you'll see the same the thing. It just doesn't seem to connect.

I've just noted now that after a period of flashing it has connected itself again. It's driving me to distraction and I've nearly put my laptop through the window a few times. I'm not sure if its the AP or the laptop. I've got another laptop I will test with (running linux). Problem is the problem is kinda intermittent.

Do you run a personal firewall? Not that I think this is necessarily involved but just want to understand how similar out setup is.
Which channel are you using ffor the network?

Download Network Stumbler and let me know what you're seeing so we can compare notes.

Cheers

Vince

 

Hi Vince: Good to hear from you. Helps to know I'm not the only one with this problem. No personal firewall here, I uninstalled Zone Alarm Pro as part of the attempt to solve this problem. I have run security checks with Symantic and PC Pitstop, each report I'm invisible. Well, not me but my network.

I'm still having the problem, that is, the computer that is 25 feet away from the host has constant connection problems. If I could, I'd move it, but it is set up at a desk that is built into the wall in my son's bedroom. To relocate it would require me to hire a contractor to remodel the room. Not! With your laptop, does the distance, say from 10' to 50' from the access point affect your connection speed? Probably hard to tell with the intermitant nature of the problem.

I have the two remote desktops connected exactly the same, configured exactly the same, the one 10' from the access point connects perfectly, downloads as fast as the host that is wired in.

The more distant computer connects and works as advertised and two minutes later, Phht. I got so damned mad yesterday morning you could have heard me cussing into the next county. I swear, I wold prefer it didn't work at all, that would be an easier problem to resolve. As it is, I'm ready to buy about 40' of cat 5 cable and crawl under the house. D-link says it is MSFT's networking problem, as no matter what, the remote computer reports "Signal Strength Excellent ", even when the connection speed is at 1Mbps and I'm seeing "the page you requested is not available" or it takes 20 minutes to load my son's home page. Gets me wondering if D-link has rigged their "signal strength" reporting software.

Then, next re-boot, pages load instantly, for a while. That would seem to indicate fading signal strength or some kind of interference but which and what??? It is hard to fathom how a re-boot of the remote machine would affect the signal strength of the access point. If interference is the issue, why it would only affect one of the machines?

MSFT's solution is to continuously to re-setup the network from scratch on all three machines, something I've done with and without their help at least 10 times this week. Always the same results, works ok for a while, then same old same old problems.

Sometimes the speed drops, sometimes just disconnects, sometimes re-connects itself, sometimes not, sometimes: "network not avilable" sometimes on manual re-connect: "connection failed" sometimes: "IP address conflict ", or any one of 7 or 8 error messages.

Keeping in mind that two other computers on the network have no problems connecting to the internet and each other, I'm seriously thinking of re-formatting and re-installing Windows on the distant machine in the slim hope that would fix the problem, even though the install was a clean install on a formatted drive about two weeks ago, with almost nothing else on the machine.

As for the cordless phone issue, If I'm on the 2.4Mhz cordless phone, near, say within 10', of any of the machines, I can hear the cracks, pops and buzzes keeping perfect time with the hard drive led while the network is establishing a connection. So, there is no doubt on my part that the 'phone is hearing the D-link, whether the D-Link is hearing the 'phone is still an open question, but I'm not going to toss the cordless phones. The problem persists when the 'phone is not in use and not broadcasting any signal. So, I also think it is a red herring. Changing channels on the cordless phone does help the telephone reception, on some channels louder, on others just barely heard but always there.


I believe the current setup here is on channel 6, but I've done so many configuration changes, not only I don't remember what channel, I am so confused I don't even remember how to change it.
Tell me where to find Network Stumbler, I'll give it a whirl and we can compare results.

Any and all help on this is greatly appreciated. Thanks again to this great board.

Martin

 

Martin,

Network Stumbler can be found at http://www.netstumbler.com. It'll at least give you a more accurate picture of what signal strength is like. Interestingly, my DLink is set to channel 6 but in Network Stumbler I can see the connection is renegotiating itself to channel 10. No idea why. I'm sure if I spoke to DLink they'd tell me it was a feature. Today is ok, par a frustrating start to the day with it dropping. Incidently this happens at a range of 15 inches from the AP.

There are some other wireless tool out there. I'll have a snoop and see if I can dig anything else up. While typing this, I had a walk around my pokey flat and lost connectivity. It has now renegotiated itself back to channel 10.

Cheers

Vince