Network trouble

[Tonitrus]

Just set it up again now, and it seems to be working fine. 

Since the trouble just started up last evening (when more people would be home, upping wifi network traffic), it has to be wifi inference/signal overload/channel traffic, or something like that....right?   

[Tonitrus]

Ok, just kidding.  After 5 minutes it went to crap again.  The wifi network still shows up, but no devices can connect to it. 

That kinda trashes the network traffic idea unless everyone just started blowing it out in the last 5. 

[Tonitrus]

I powered the router up again after most of the day off...it worked fine for about 5 minutes, then crapped out.  I got some wifi monitoring software, and had made sure it was on a channel none of the other networks were using, but still no good.

At this point, I am going to try a newer router (this is just an old 802.11g), and see if that will fix it.  I'll probably try an Apple Airport Express. :snob: 

[DontSayBanana]

I powered the router up again after most of the day off...it worked fine for about 5 minutes, then crapped out.  I got some wifi monitoring software, and had made sure it was on a channel none of the other networks were using, but still no good.

At this point, I am going to try a newer router (this is just an old 802.11g), and see if that will fix it.  I'll probably try an Apple Airport Express. :snob: 

That's actually likely.  Newer devices are going to be programmed more to use Wireless-N, Wireless-A, or Wireless-AC.  They'll mostly keep G support just for legacy purposes, but not really optimize the drivers very well, since they're not expecting most users to be using a G router for almost all the time.

[Tonitrus]

Weird.

So after going out to run some errands (I had the router unplugged again), I plug it back in and it starts running just fine...can connect with my Macbook and iPad, no problems.

One of the frustrating parts of this process, is that it always seemed to die when I start up my desktop PC and try to connect.  So after it seems to be working fine for 10-ish minutes, I go over to the PC, boot it up, it connects to the internet and works...for about 5 seconds.  Then all connected devices lose connection and it dies again.

Either I am now paranoid, or some how the PC accessing the wifi connection kills it dead...but I have no idea how it would/could do that.

[Tonitrus]

And doing a little isolation test...running just fine with only the Macbook and iPad for some time now.

Dunno how trying to connect my PC kills it for all devices (the first night I set it all up last week, the PC connected and worked just fine). 

[DontSayBanana]

Maybe you might want to try finding a generic driver for your PC's WLAN adapter.  Normally, I advise using the one provided by the company, but it's starting to sound to me like a bad driver is flooding the network with bad packets.

When you pulled up the wireless monitoring software, did you get a count of packet retrys/resends?  If it's sending enough bad data, it could flood the network with the resends, bogging you down and ending up with what you're describing.

[Tonitrus]

It ended up dying again without using the PC, so I'll likely pick up a new router anyway.