Wireless Connectivity Issues

S

s3rv0

Famous
Joined
Apr 10, 2008
Messages
553
Alright, here's a real brief rundown:

Old router gave my computer issues wirelessly. We have one computer hooked to it wired, 2 wireless laptops, and my PSP that all used it with no issues ever. Just my computer. It doesn't seem to be location, because if we use wireless devices in that same area of the house they work fine. Well, I got a new NIC and a new router even, because I was tired of not knowing what was going on. Now I have a netgear dual band wireless N router with a dual band wireless N card to match. Same thing is still happening now though. What happens is I'll be connected and working fine, then will drop connection randomly for no reason, for a random amount of time. It still says I'm connected to the router and that I have access to the internet, but apparently one or both of those is not true. I tried a ping -t to google, and I will have stretches of 10-20-50 good replies of under 50ms, and then there'll be a few that hiccup with times of 3000 to 8000ms, then just as many with host unreachable.

My computer is the only one running Vista 64 bit, which may or may not be causing issues. Again, all other computers connect and run on the new router's network absolutely fine.

Any help on this issue would be most appreciated. If you can resolve this issue permanently, I pledge you all my Casino dollars ($30,000 worth) and, if you play TF2, a class hat if you want, your choice of which one. If you need more info on the situation or hardware, reply to this thread or PM me or both.
 
Ok a few things first. Reading your post, you state your internet has NEVER worked properly, correct? Does this problem happen in a certain length of time, ex. every 60 secs?
 
Yes, it does happen about every 60 seconds (ish). Either it is a dropped connection, ghost connection (it says that it's connected but obviously it really isn't), or a lag spike where a ping to google will take 2,500-8,000ms. My NIC is a Linksys Wireless-N PCI Adapter with dual band (Model WMP600N), and I'm using the drivers that came with it.

I'm trying those two programs as we speak. Will post the results when I'm finished.
 
Last edited:
Since your card is using the rt2860 chipset, you can use these drivers. They're direct from Ralink(the makers of the chipset), so they might be better than the ones Linksys provides. I'd suggest trying both the vista 64bit drivers and xp 64bit drivers in that package if you can, one may work better than the other.
 
I've got both of the first two programs you posted running on my machine. No noticeable effect.

I did notice one thing though: Once I manage to get a download going, it keeps going constantly, just really really slowly. 1-2 kb/s, it seems. Even when pings are not going through and I can't load a web page or even my router's interface, it seems that the download keeps going, ever so slowly.

Dunno if that little tidbit helps diagnostically speaking. I'm downloading the drivers you linked now, will try and report back.
 
Okay, drivers intalled, along with Ralink's wifi connection utility. I'm sort of using my ping -t to google, as you probably noticed, to gauge success thus far. I've gone like 5 minutes without a packet being dropped, and I only see one instance of two adjacent packets hopping up to a latency of about 3000 ms. That was one of the parts of the issue, the ping spikes, but only one spike in 5 minutes whereas before they were every 60 seconds or just constant, that's an improvement.

This is still way too soon to get happy though, I've literally had the network work for days or weeks uninterrupted only to start throwing a kid-in-a-candy-store-when-mommy-said-no style epic tantrum. I'll post back later tonight with more results.

I'm cautiously optimistic.

And scared, but reluctantly willing, to give away a hat. >_>
 
Yeah well, spoke too soon of course.

Loaded up an MMO that always seems to cause connection issues. Immediately lost connection. Now, with the game open but not even connected, I've regained connection with now those ping -t packets are coming back consistently, but with terrible latencies. Best so far is about 260ms, all the way up to 3000.

It definitely gets worse the more I try to utilize the network. I have Ralink's utility running, along with the other two you posted earlier, and get jack.

To confirm that whole "internet is working but barely" thing, I'm connected to that MMO, able to watch things going on around me, but unable to actually do anything. I can see chat coming up and players running by, but cannot do anything like that myself. Meanwhile, all my packets to google are timing out, so it seems like I'm not connected...but obviously I am. Barely.

Frustrating.

As for installing different versions of those same drivers, it never really gave me an option on choosing what version, so I assume I just got the Vista 64 bit ones.

Though I do have to say thanks for all the help thus far. If I come across terse or upset, it's at this situation, not at you or any of your advice. I'm happy to have something to try rather than just sit here and bang my head against the wall.
 
Last edited:
Routers sometimes have issues with programs running. utorrent will sometimes kill my connection. Is firmware upgraded on the router?

What i would do is slowly kill off programs and see if that is the problem. Or pop in another computer the network card you are using and see if you get the same problems. Changing the security type on your router could help as well.

And finally, call your provider and make sure they are not blocking any ports. Sometimes they can tweak things so you get a better connection.
 
So that's a good point; I had signal duplexing disabled before. New router, b/g/n are all on. THe only problem is it's less clear on how to disable b and n, which is what I'd like to do. I will work with N later when I get a chance to putz around with it, for now I just want something stable that I can use, then I'll worry about playing with dual-band N and such.

Anyway, it gives 4 settings:

Up to 130Mbps at 5ghz and 54 Mbps at 2.4ghz: Both G/B and N active.
Up to 130Mbps at 2.4ghz: Just N.
Up to 270Mbps at 2.4ghz: Just N.
Up to 130Mbps at 5ghz and 54Mbps at 5ghz: Both G/B and N active.

So, I can't freaking turn N off and go just G.

And for right now, I can't get N connectivity down on my computer...may try troubleshooting that if N-only is the only way to disable signal duplexing.

And Frank - I'll mess around with some of those security settings as well, but for now I want to try disabling duplexing as that's given me results in the past.
 
I've got my NIC set to 2.4ghz G only. No real success there. Those settings were for the router. I've got my NIC set to G only, but wanted to set my router to G only as well to help prevent interference, that's helped in the past.

At least I think I did. I used Ralink's software and set it to 2.4ghz G only. The advanced tab in the device manager's settings and there's no clear "Disable 802.11n" setting. There's a setting for signal duplexing, and that has a few options, but none of which I'm sure about. Insight on this?
 
Last edited:
So, I was thinking...this new router has a repeater mode. Would it work to set up the old router as it was, use the new one on repeater mode near my computer, and then hook up to it via a wired connection? It wouldn't so much solve the problem as it would avoid it, but hey, I'd take avoidance at this point. I'm at wit's end.
 
Tried the whole repeater thing. Couldn't connect via wire or wirelessly. I really lack the networking know-how to make this BS work. I miss TF2. :(
 
So...I think I fixed it. I found a link on Tomshardware.com, basically giving a .NET framework program a guy had written to disable "more preferred network" searching that Vista64 does, along with a few other settings, which is supposedly the cause of the lag. I've had this beast running without a hiccup for a while now, in game, online, messaging, etc. Too bad it took me all day to do, so now I'm going to be making dinner, doing some housework with the missus, etc., instead of playing TF2. :-\ And I work tomorrow...but Friday off. So, if this is the solution, I'll know for sure by then with some more longterm testing. And then, finally, good gaming is back.
 
s3rv0 said:
So...I think I fixed it. I found a link on Tomshardware.com, basically giving a .NET framework program a guy had written to disable "more preferred network" searching that Vista64 does, along with a few other settings, which is supposedly the cause of the lag. I've had this beast running without a hiccup for a while now, in game, online, messaging, etc. Too bad it took me all day to do, so now I'm going to be making dinner, doing some housework with the missus, etc., instead of playing TF2. :- And I work tomorrow...but Friday off. So, if this is the solution, I'll know for sure by then with some more longterm testing. And then, finally, good gaming is back.
Click to expand...

Thats what those two programs I linked are supposed to do, but I've read that it has trouble with certain drivers. Mind showing me the program you found?

If your program doesn't work long-term, I'm out of ideas for now:facewall:
 
I think I know how to make this long-term, it just involves a few settings toggled via the command console.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/23674-43-vista-wireless-network-spikes

That's the thread from Tom's that has all the info. The last post on the first page has the program in it. The post by JangoReborn (It starts "Hello, as a random act of kindness...") shows the command prompt settings to switch to disable Vista's "More Preferred Network" searching.

I was unable to follow Jango's instructions due to a strange error when clicking "properties" on the network I wanted to select and use, but I don't think that part of the step is necessary, or at least it's not the only way to go about doing what he describes. I may just need to restart my machine to get rid of that error as well, I haven't done that yet, been away for the last several hours. Pretty much as soon as I fixed it, I had to go run errands and cook dinner and do chores, haha. Anyway, I'm going to try those command prompt commands and report back to this thread as to how they worked, so that people in the future can hopefully refer to it to solve this same problem. Unfortunately it sounds like it's not a terribly uncommon issue with Vista 64. I'd hate to see an eGO member buy a new computer and then be dumbfounded at their lack of reliable internet access.




Edit: I executed the command prompt command as specified, just copied it and pasted it as it was, but had to change it to Connection 2. If you are wondering what connection you need to change, type "ipconfig" in the command prompt, and the very first entry should be the connection you want. It will show addresses for your IP, your SN Mask, and your default gateway, which is your router's IP address. It will say at the top of that section "Wireless LAN Adapter Wireless Network Connection X:". Or it'll say whatever the name of YOUR specific connection is. In any case, that's what you put in the command, which is as follows:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k netsh wlan set autoconfig enabled=no interface="Wireless Network Connection 1"

Just sub the "Wireless Network Connection 1" part with what you need. You DO need the quotes around it. You can copy and paste it as I have it here into your command console provided you have the correct connection name. I am currently testing out this fix with the aforementioned .NET framework program turned off, and will edit this post once more when I have conclusive results. Cheers!


Edit: Here's something that has brought a tear to my eye...

Ping statistics for 74.125.95.106:
Packets: Sent = 6991, Received = 6987, Lost = 4
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 28ms, Maximum = 1022ms, Average = 35ms

Loss 0%!!!!! My best loss before was 5% with average pings in the hundreds. My worst was nearly 75% with pings nearing 10,000. MY INTARWEB R WURKING YAY!

TF2 tomorrow after work for sure.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

H0LLYW00D
  • Sticky
Battlefield Division Intro and Welcome!
Replies
0
Views
462
H0LLYW00D
H0LLYW00D
Saf
  • Sticky
Official eGO Minecraft Player Guide
Replies
1
Views
1K
Saf
Saf

Latest posts

Back
Top