Network Randomly Stops Working

Hey everyone,

Got a problem that's been irking me that I have no clue what's going on. (I'll cover how my network is setup at the bottom)

In a nutshell, my wireless internet will stop working (anywhere from a minute to ten) entirely, and will randomly begin working again. Whenever it goes down, watching the windows icon, it's almost as if my adapter is sending the packets, but NONE are being recieved back while the net is down.

My brother experiences the same problem.

I haven't tested it lately, but I BELIEVE when this happens, the 1 computer hard-wired to the router will also be unable to access the internet. IE will just sit saying "Connecting to site [address] "

There's no rhyme or reason, so I'm just wondering which one of many connections is screwing up.

At the internet itself, there's a Wireless Router with only 1 computer physically linked to it. From there, there's up to 3 other connections connecting wirelessly through 1 extender. I don't have my brother's specs, all I know is he has a wireless PCI card for his comp, and the Linksys Game Adapter for his Xbox360. I have my computer hooked up through a USB Wireless Adapter and hook my 360 up simply through ICS.

We're using the G signal on Channel 6. All comps are running XP, at at least mine has all security patches installed.

We tried using 2 net extenders, but that just made life a pain in the rear and the comps wouldn't use each one seperately.

So I'm just wondering where the issue is? Is it having multiple things on one extender? Is our router just old and unable to process anything?

Please help!!!!!!

Side note; the only possible interferences would be a 2.4Ghz phone 2+ feet from the router, but the drops occur whether someone calls or not. Other than that, there's no major interferences I can think of...

Thanks.

 

Have you ever contacted your ISP?

Everything you described seems OK.