Getting alot of association connection drops. I can usually get back on by repositioning the antenna, but my overall signal strength as reported by the realtek software is 80 signal strength with 65-80 percent quality. The quality of the connection vacillates wildly. Yesterday when the connection dropped I could not get back on and I was down for about 30 min, then back again. I also get frequent episodes where no data can get out-nothing being sent according to firewall reporting. I have run a good antivirus scan and everything comes out clean. I have tried to disable unneccesary services and other hacker prone settings.
Using an unencrypted public AP of put out by a phone company.
Running xp, no router, software firewall set tight and a usb radio with realtek chipset and software.
Because this connection is unencrypted I sometimes use Tor to encrypt sensitive data.
Since the AP is unencrypted and not owned by me, I can't used encryption correct?
What is the most probable source of these connection drops? And what can I do to eliminate them? I notice when I run everything using Tor, it seems they are less frequent, so I am thinking hacker DOS attacks or similar?