I have Virgin broadband and connect using Wifi on Vista laptop.
It's fine for hours, strong signal but sometimes it'll go through a funny 15 minutes where the connection just drops, I get the red X through the taskbar icon, then 20 seconds later it reconnects, then drops again. This goes on for 10-15 minutes, then it's fine again for hours.
My question is, could there be some kind of specific interference from electrical appliances or something from neighbours? Seems to happen mostly in the early evening, anyone experience anything similar?
Have you checked that the channel you are using does not conflict with other local WiFi routers? Could be activity by your neighbours swamping your signal.
Thanks everyone for the replies. I've tried changing channel (I've got an app on my phone that shows what channels the neighbours are using & changed it to one that wasn't being used but no change).
Must be a microwave or something, not much I can do about it!
Recently had similar issues with my mother's iPad. Cured with a new router running 802.11n as opposed to 802.11g that the old router used. Worth checking what protocol your router is running.
Just changed to a SuperHub from the old style 'modem' and so far it seems O.K. Like you, Vista on a laptop.
I have a similar ap on my Android phone and I have noted that the signal strength does apparently go up and down for no obvious reason.
I see peaks appear and disappear on various channels, and different APs show as the strongest signal. This may well be the APs bumping up signal strength when sending data or when seeing errors in data, but I am guessing here.
As you say, from the symptoms it looks like interference from a non-WiFi source.
Have you tried moving the SuperHub around? Difficult without a piece of coax to extend the reach, but it should be simple to make up an extender.
Also, where is the SuperHub located? I assume that you would know if a microwave or other device in your house would be operating at the time of the problem, so presumably we are looking at next door and considering the inverse square law. How close is you closest neighbour? Is it possible that there is a device quite near you but through a wall? Moving the router a small amount might reduce the interference a lot. You could even consider papering a wall in tinfoil (assuming that like tinfoil hats this keeps harmful rays away) :-)
Oh, and just to rule out Windows management of WiFi, how about dual boot into Linux to see if you get the same symptoms with a different OS?
Is there any particular advantage in having one of these SuperHub thingies? We've got a standard cable modem and an Apple Airport Extreme. Works for us. What are we missing out on? (Other than tales of woe! :-) )
Might be worth knocking on neighbours doors when the thing dies to see if they are using their microwave. It might have duff/dirty door seals and be leaking RF rather a lot. See other comment about microwave just the other side of wall from AP though.
Or it might be a Panasonic Inverter type - mine, even when newish, used to spew enough s**te from the electronics to kill WiFI - and I had already been over it with a leakage detector.
Yep, same problem here with a Panasonic Inverter combi. Can't detect any leakage (albeit with an ancient tester that must be 25 years old and was last calibrated 20 years ago)
Wifi was failing every time the microwave was used.
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