Driven mad by wireless mystery - update

On 22/1/2006 at 10.19 I posted as at bottom of this posting. I tried all
suggestions made but to no avail and eventually came to accept continual
rebooting of the router and other fiddling to regain the lost connection.
Yesterday I installed a brand new Belkin pre N router and enjoyed the first
full 24 hours of continuous connection I have enjoyed for months.

Alas though it stopped this morning and after spending one hour of the phone
to Belkin Tech Support the position is not resolved. I am back to wired for
the moment thinking do I now buy the special pre N cards for my two PC's
(£60 each) or is this throwing good money away. Or should I send the new
router back and just give up and revert to wires.

Any thoughts appreciated.

Ken




For around a year I have enjoyed wireless BB connection until just before
Christmas when my Belkin router had a problem.
So bought new D Link router but couldn't get it to work, asked my usual PC
engineer in who couldn't get to work. Then got in a specialist networking
engineer who also couldn't get it to work and he tried fitting another
router in case there was a fault but could get that to work.

Bought brand new Belkin router but again couldn't get to work. Relooked at
failed router and was only power pack so Belkins sent me free one. So back
to my original set up but still not able to get to work despite calling Tech
Support and getting in my usual PC engineer.

The 'not working' is not connecting, not being able to acquire network
address and mostly dropped connection. Dropping sometimes several times per
day sometimes lasting for a few days. Tried rebooting router, restarting
PCs, reformatting both PCs and even bought dongles which sometimes work
better than PCI card.

I have two PCs around 15 months old with quite high specs, about 20 feet
apart with router half way between. Router has direct sight line to rear of
my tower. I am now being told there must be something causing the
degradation in signal and perhaps I should give up and revert to wires. Yet
neighbours to sides and across the road (four house) have no problems and
all on wireless for same period of time as me. No new wireless gadgets
anywhere.

Any ideas appreciated but bear in mind I am not a boffin.

Ken

On 11 Mar 2006 09:59, "Ken" <Reply to NG only> wrote:

>Any thoughts appreciated.


Is there anyone nearby with whom you could do a temporary swap of kit,
to see (a) that wireless kit [from some other manufacturer] will work,
and for them to 'prove' state of your Belkin kit - limit to 48 hours,
even if there's no problem - so they would be willing to co-operate
another time (!) and if theirs works in your house, then you know
it can be done... if not, then back to wires... Good luck.

Peter (lots of wire here, no wireless!)

"Ken" <Reply to NG only> wrote:

> On 22/1/2006 at 10.19 I posted as at bottom of this posting. I tried all
> suggestions made but to no avail and eventually came to accept continual
> rebooting of the router and other fiddling to regain the lost connection.
> Yesterday I installed a brand new Belkin pre N router and enjoyed the
> first full 24 hours of continuous connection I have enjoyed for months.

Surely a pre-N router also requires pre-N clients to make any difference?

> Alas though it stopped this morning and after spending one hour of the
> phone to Belkin Tech Support the position is not resolved. I am back to
> wired for the moment thinking do I now buy the special pre N cards for my
> two PC's (£60 each) or is this throwing good money away. Or should I send
> the new router back and just give up and revert to wires.

Wires are almost inevitably a better idea, IME - but then I use my LAN for
XDMCP clients that can easily max out 100mbit ethernet. XDMCP desktops over
Wifi are barely tolerable.

> Any thoughts appreciated.

If no wireless router will work reliably at your site, then there must be a
lot of local interference on the 2.4GHz band where you are. Things like
pre-N may well help to mitigate this, but alas I fear you may be throwing
good money after bad. Perhaps you could borrow some wireless kit that uses
a different band [eg 802.11a] - but there aren't many people with spare
802.11a kit just lying around!

If you're of a technical bent, then

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.11n

is worth a read.

--
<http://ale.cx/> (AIM:troffasky) ((E-Mail Removed))
10:42:30 up 2 days, 15:32, 2 users, load average: 0.02, 0.04, 0.00
This is my BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMSTICK

"Ken" <Reply to NG only> wrote in message
news:44129f6b$0$5000$(E-Mail Removed)...
> On 22/1/2006 at 10.19 I posted as at bottom of this posting. I tried all
> suggestions made but to no avail and eventually came to accept continual
> rebooting of the router and other fiddling to regain the lost connection.
> Yesterday I installed a brand new Belkin pre N router and enjoyed the
> first full 24 hours of continuous connection I have enjoyed for months.
>
> Alas though it stopped this morning and after spending one hour of the
> phone to Belkin Tech Support the position is not resolved. I am back to
> wired for the moment thinking do I now buy the special pre N cards for my
> two PC's (£60 each) or is this throwing good money away. Or should I send
> the new router back and just give up and revert to wires.
>
> Any thoughts appreciated.
>
> Ken

The new router is packed up awaiting collection from Dabs. Hope they have an
understanding returns policy but it is not fit for the purpose in my home?

Ken

Ken wrote:
> The new router is packed up awaiting collection from Dabs. Hope they
> have an understanding returns policy but it is not fit for the
> purpose in my home?

Check out past posts about dabs returns here :

http://tinyurl.com/qpdv9

I hope you have more luck than they did.

"alexd" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> "Ken" <Reply to NG only> wrote:
>
>> On 22/1/2006 at 10.19 I posted as at bottom of this posting. I tried all
>> suggestions made but to no avail and eventually came to accept continual
>> rebooting of the router and other fiddling to regain the lost connection.
>> Yesterday I installed a brand new Belkin pre N router and enjoyed the
>> first full 24 hours of continuous connection I have enjoyed for months.
>
> Surely a pre-N router also requires pre-N clients to make any difference?
>
Not in my experience. I'm using a BT-branded PC card in my laptop, and
performance has been MUCH better since I installed a Belkin pre-N router. By
'much better' I mean that I didn't have a usable signal in my home office.
Now it's 'very good'.

"nut" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:dv2b70$10op$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Ken wrote:
>> The new router is packed up awaiting collection from Dabs. Hope they
>> have an understanding returns policy but it is not fit for the
>> purpose in my home?
>
> Check out past posts about dabs returns here :
>
> http://tinyurl.com/qpdv9
>
> I hope you have more luck than they did.
>


I returned a huge traditional (CRT) television to Dabs under the distance
selling regulations. I had simply ordered the wrong thing. They collected it
again but, not unreasonably, charged me the return delivery fee. A grand
total of £7.50 + vat.

A check of Parcelforce's site showed that if I hadn't used Dabs collection
service it would have cost me £30 - £40.

The refund hit my credit card a few days later.

All in all, a good service.

"Ken Wheatley" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:dv68lm$1d5p$(E-Mail Removed)...
> "nut" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:dv2b70$10op$(E-Mail Removed)...
>> Ken wrote:
>>> The new router is packed up awaiting collection from Dabs. Hope they
>>> have an understanding returns policy but it is not fit for the
>>> purpose in my home?
>>
>> Check out past posts about dabs returns here :
>>
>> http://tinyurl.com/qpdv9
>>
>> I hope you have more luck than they did.
>>
>
>
> I returned a huge traditional (CRT) television to Dabs under the distance
> selling regulations. I had simply ordered the wrong thing. They collected
> it again but, not unreasonably, charged me the return delivery fee. A
> grand total of £7.50 + vat.
>
> A check of Parcelforce's site showed that if I hadn't used Dabs collection
> service it would have cost me £30 - £40.
>
> The refund hit my credit card a few days later.
>
> All in all, a good service.

Reassuring to hear from a satisfied customer. I will wait and see and don't
mind if they make some charge.

Ken

"nut" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:dv2b70$10op$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Ken wrote:
>> The new router is packed up awaiting collection from Dabs. Hope they
>> have an understanding returns policy but it is not fit for the
>> purpose in my home?
>
> Check out past posts about dabs returns here :
>
> http://tinyurl.com/qpdv9
>
> I hope you have more luck than they did.

I did get a full refund so am happy.

Ken