I have a new Toshiba L35-S2171 laptop running XP Home. The built-in wireless shows up in Device Manager as an Atheros AR5005G. the driver version is 4.1.2.146. The router is a new Buffalo WHR-HP-G54, with firmware 1.40, using WPA TKIP encryption. The desktop is wired to the router, and that seems to work fine.
The problem I have is with the laptop. I may be following a chat room with no problem, but when I go to open a new instance of IE and go to, say, Google, or Yahoo, I get no repsonse. No response even to a ping. Meanwhile, the chat room traffic continues to come in normally. Then, I may try Google again a few minutes later, and it works. But then after a while it becomes non-responsive again. Meanwhile, chat back and forth continues normally.
Of course this may even be a modem or Cox problem, but since I'm new to wireless and routers and laptops, and since I've never seen this behavior before, I would like to try to rule out some things if I can.
I would appreciate any ideas anyone may have. I would also like to know if changing any of these settings might help firm things up a bit:
Router:
Channel select - Auto (maybe change to 11 fixed - nobody else using) Multicast rate - Auto (maybe change to 54) Frame bursting - 125 (125 not supported on client - maybe change to normal or off)
802.11g Protection - On (Off?) Output power - 100% (25, 50, 75) Anything else?Client:
Power saver mode - On (Off? - what does this do?)
From what I can see, the signal strength is quite strong when these problems come up. It's the HP router, and I'm just in the next room, so I don't think that's the problem. Also, there's only one other wireless detected, and it's low signal, and using channel 6. I'm the only one on channel 11.
Could this be some strange NAT problem, where the routing table gets filled up and the router won't let the repsonse back in? Would a router power-cycle fix that?