Wireless Routers

[XxSephirothxX]

Linksys routers are kind of known for dropping when a large number of connections is present. I hacked HyperWRT onto a WRT54GL a while ago and it made things fair bit better. Then I bought a WAG54G (router + modem) and that's been pretty good with the Linksys firmware. I haven't reset it in months, and over that period I've had several torrents with 200+ connections. The wireless signal is decent (makes it from one end of my house to the other without trouble) and the stability is better than it ever was on the Linksys firmware of the WRT54GL.

One of my friends had very good experience with a custom firmware in the past, so that's probably what I'll end up doing. Which means I need to make sure that the version I get allows for custom firmware--my version of the WRT54G doesn't. Are there any routers you know of that are more stable out of the box, like a D-Link or a high-end Netgear?

Your wireless dropping out was probably caused by some kind of temporary radio interference. Like a phone/microwave/large solenoid that sits near your router. Try doing a factory reset on the router to give the firmware a good kick.

I do have a ton of sitting on my desk and we all have cell phones, so that sounds like it might be the problem. I'll try fully resetting it today and see if that helps.

Do you have concrete floors/walls, or lots of wires running between the router and where your roommate can't load pages? There is probably something electrical or very solid killing the data in transit. The strength that the laptop says the signal is isn't always accurate, so don't trust it (or its wireless card). Can you get it to work when it's closer to the router?

I believe when he was in my room it did actually work better. I don't think we have concrete floors, but it seems like something must be blocking the transmission. Weird thing is one of my other roommates could access it just fine from downstairs with a far older computer; my roommate who's having the trouble has a Vaio with extremely good wireless range. It can detect networks that are way further away than my own computer can, for instance.

When the laptop kicks you off of the network, it's almost certainly due to an IP address conflict, or more specifically that no two computers are allowed to have the same IP address on a network and both computers are trying to lease the same address. What you need to do is set static IPs on each computer, Google will tell you how, very smartly if you need to find out.

Kind of what I assumed, except it happens no matter what IP I'm automatically set to and never gives me a IP conflict error. I've gotten those before, so I assumed it would happen if that was the problem in this case, but I guess not. I know how to set up a static IP but I'm lazy. Guess I'll try it and see if it stops the problem though.

I actually had it on 2.4662 and changed it to 2.442 last night. Anyway, it's definitely not leechers, because it works perfectly fine wired, just not wireless at the moment. I use WEP anyway, and as tempting as a bit more speed is, I don't think I'm ready to switch to a MAC address based system. I'd barely know what I was doing and my roommates would be even more confused.