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Intermittent connection - is it my card or my router?

Hi,

I just picked up a Dell Inspiron 640m laptop, which comes with an internal wireless card, Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN Mini-Card Rev 3.6. My router at home is an older one, an SMC 7004VWBR. Had it for a couple of years, its only

802.11b (i think).

The SMC had worked well before with an older dell laptop, but it had an SMC PCMCIA wireless card to talk to the router.

With the new dell, I upgraded the SMC firmware so that I could use WPA encryption. That all seemed to go ok, and I turned on encryption and all is good, right?

Kinda....

Occasionally, while surfing, the Dell loses its inetrnet connection. Firefox shows that page not found error. Checking the wireless info, I will have an excellent signal to the router and no indication of anything wrong. By right-clicking on the wireless icon and selecting 'Repair', the problem is fixed and back to surfing, etc. This happens at least once or twice a day. And happens at seemingly random times during normal use of the laptop.

When this happens, I do know that the router is still flowing info from my ISP cause I have checked my desktop, which is hard-wired to the router, and it still has a connection to the outside.

Does this sound more like a router or wireless card problem? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks, DoranCat

Reply to
dorancat
Loading thread data ...

Hi, Logic says, you have two things changed. Laptop and firmware. So what do you think?

Reply to
Tony Hwang

Well...

I knew 2 things had changed. I was wondering if anyone had an experience like...

"Oh yeah, I upgraded my firmware and all hell broke loose."

or

"Lots of probs with the Dell internal wireless card. I found it only plays well with router Brand X."

Anything like that?

Thanks, DoranCat

Reply to
dorancat

"dorancat" hath wroth:

formatting link

It's 802.11b only.

Right. WPA is good.

Let's see if I got this right. It disconnects *WHILE* surfing? Not while it's idle or not being used? There's no relation with the laptop going into hibernate or power save mode? If it disconnected while idle, I would have you check the power save settings on the laptop to make sure it's not shutting down. There's also a possible issue with 802.1x authentication, where it disconnects every XXXX seconds when re-negotiating for a new key. That would be a driver issue on your Dell 1390 PCI Express card. However, having it disconnect *WHILE* you're surfing implies interference from some other wireless device. See the FAQ at:

for a list of possible culprits. The easiest thing to do first is change the channel (1, 6, or 11). Relocate the router to some place that does not have a view of the city. Lay off the microwave dinners. Trade in the 2.4GHz cordless phone for a 900MHz or 5.8GHz model. Etc.

Is there any pattern to the disconnects?

Try this instead: start -> run -> cmd ipconfig /release wait about 10 seconds ipconfig /renew ipconfig Did you get an IP address? Does it now work? If so, methinks the DHCP lease has expired and the renewal failed. The sloppy way to fix that is to just extend the lease time in the SMC router settings.

Not good. That sounds like genuine interference. You can have a very strong signal, but if the interference is equally strong, it will eventually disconnect.

Incidentally, did you update the Dell 1390 driver to the latest revision?

I would guess(tm) that it's neither and sounds more like interference or possibly power management setting for the 1390 card. The wireless cards all tend to favor the higher 802.11g speeds with 2nd class service offered to 802.11b devices. If the Dell 1390 settings offer something like an "802.11b only" setting, I would try that. Definitely try a different RF channel (1, 6, or 11). Otherwise, methinks it's time to go shopping for an 802.11g wireless router.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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