hi all

I have a laptop from my work that I want to use to connect to my home
wireless network. The network works fine for all other computers
(wireless as well as wired). My laptop however very oftenly at
irregular times disconnects from the internet (wireless icon in the
system tray indicates he is searching and message "acquiring network
address" is displayed). It works when he is connected but I get thrown
off very often which is disturbing. I have set my router to broadcast
SSID instead of hide it but for the rest, I have no clue what I can
do. I have xp professional SP2 with the windows update that adds WPA2
functionality in the drop down menu.

Thanks

In most cases, this is wireless security setting issue. For troubleshooting,
setup the wireless without security. Does that fix the problem? Or this
search result may help.

Acquiring network addressWhen that happens, the LAN icon in the tray shows
"Acquiring network address". The ipconfig command receives 0.0.0.0 IP
address. ...
      www.chicagotech.net/Networking/acquiringnetwork.htm


Show quoteHide quote

Hi
From your description it seems that the Wireless Connection between your
Wireless computer and the Wireless Router intermittently drops.
It might be due to weak signal or and environmental electronic noise that
interfere with the signal.
Place the Wireless Router in a spot that is high above surrounding
obstructions so that the transmission would not be impeded.
Disable the Wireless security, and change the transmission channels in the
Wireless Router (see the Router's manual). Find the best performing and
stable channel, and then enable again the security.
In general.
My  Wireless does not work - http://www.ezlan.net/wireless.html
Wireless Basic Configuration - http://www.ezlan.net/Wireless_Config.html
Wireless Security -  http://www.ezlan.net/Wireless_Security.html
Jack (MS, MVP-Networking)

Show quoteHide quote

On Jan 3, 3:36 am, "Jack \(MVP-Networking\)."
<j***@discussiongroup.com> wrote:
Show quoteHide quoteThanks Jack and Robert. I will play with the options you mentioned and
let you know what it was. 2 questions though:

1. I have read in a pc magazine that they recommend a program such as
"netstumbler" to record your wireless home network speed. Do you
recommend this when experimenting with the options to see what gives
the best connection?
2. Today I bought a wireless adapter for my mother's laptop and
installed it. The signal seems to be ok all the time with no
interruptions and this at the same location where my laptop is used.
However, when I disable broadcast ssid on my router, her laptop looses
connection and I can't seem to connect anymore until I broadcast the
ssid again. Why is this? Windows knows about my ssid since it worked
before I disabled broadcast so xp should remember the ssid, no?

On Jan 3, 1:32 pm, Alex <ad1***@telenet.be> wrote:
Show quoteHide quote1 -  Netstumbler will only display the details of the possible
wireless networks speeds in your area.  It will not help to fix your
network problem.

2 - Disabling the broadcast of the SSID is not a security setting for
your router.  Look for info on how to set up WPA or WPA2.

Hi
The "Speed" displayed by the Connection is Not the real measured "Speed", it
is a reading form the Wireless Card Drivers.
Netstumbler is a very good tool the provide info about the Wireless
Connection around you but it does not reflect accurately the actual "Speed"
The best way to measure actual "Speed" is to transfer/download a file of
known size and time it.
Wireless security capacity is.
No Security
MAC______(Band Aid if nothing else is available).
WEP64____(Easy, to "Break" by knowledgeable people).
WEP128___(A little Harder, but "Hackable" too).
-------------------
The three above are Not considered safe.
Safe Starts here at WPA.
------------------
WPA-PSK__(Very Hard to Break).
WPA-AES__(Not functionally Breakable)
WPA2____ (Not functionally Breakable).
Note 1: WPA-AES the the current entry level rendition of WPA2.
Note 2: If you use WinXP and did not updated it you would have to download
the WPA2 patch from Microsoft. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/893357
The documentation of your Wireless devices (Wireless Router, and Wireless
Computer's Card) should state the type of security that is available with
your Wireless hardware.
All devices MUST be set to the same security level using the same pass
phrase.
Therefore the security must be set according what ever is the best possible
of one of the Wireless devices.
I.e. even if most of your system might be capable to be configured to the
max. with WPA2, but one device is only capable to be configured to max . of
WEP, to whole system must be configured to WEP.
If you need more good security and one device (like a Wireless card that can
do WEP only) is holding better security for the whole Network, replace the
device with a better one.
Setting Wireless Security - http://www.ezlan.net/Wireless_Security.html
The Core differences between WEP, WPA, and WPA2 -
http://www.ezlan.net/wpa_wep.html
Jack (MVP-Networking).


On Jan 3, 3:36 am, "Jack \(MVP-Networking\)."
<j***@discussiongroup.com> wrote:
Show quoteHide quoteThanks Jack and Robert. I will play with the options you mentioned and
let you know what it was. 2 questions though:

1. I have read in a pc magazine that they recommend a program such as
"netstumbler" to record your wireless home network speed. Do you
recommend this when experimenting with the options to see what gives
the best connection?
2. Today I bought a wireless adapter for my mother's laptop and
installed it. The signal seems to be ok all the time with no
interruptions and this at the same location where my laptop is used.
However, when I disable broadcast ssid on my router, her laptop looses
connection and I can't seem to connect anymore until I broadcast the
ssid again. Why is this? Windows knows about my ssid since it worked
before I disabled broadcast so xp should remember the ssid, no?

On Jan 4, 7:54 pm, "Jack \(MVP-Networking\)."
<j***@discussiongroup.com> wrote:
Show quoteHide quoteYou said to find the best channel so here is what I did:
I tested all 13 channels by enabling them one by one from my router's
webpage. For each channel I wrote down the average Signal/Noise, dBm
that I read from the graph in Netstumbler. I got highest peaks for
channel 5 (about -49dBm) and lowest peaks for channel 1 (about
-62dBm). The default channel it used to be on was ch11 so I changed
this to ch5. I even tried combinations with turbo on and off and ssid
broadcast on and off (yes, I spent the entire afternoon doing this:)

Now for the location of my router. I must say there is not much I can
do about that since my router is upstairs, as well as my printer
(attached to router via usb) and my pc (lan cable to router) and
external hard drive (to usb port on router). Then there is one lan
cable going downstairs to the cable modem. For wireless internet I
always sit downstairs with my work's laptop and my mother's laptop. I
am guessing the max straight distance between router and wireless
laptop is around 4-6meters. I have thought of moving the router
downstairs together with the cable modem since I always sit downstairs
anyway for wireless internet but I'm affraid I'm restricted by all the
cables coming from all the devices upstairs that I don't have a
choice.

About security settings: I am using XP SP2 with the windows update you
mentioned to enable WPA2. So I've set the wireless properties in
windows to WPA2-PSK and data encryption to AES instead of TKIP and a
network key that is 21 characters long. This because I read this is
the safest and hardest to hack but correct me if I'm wrong since I
don't have a clue about the difference between AES, TKIP or WPA and
WPA-PSK etc. There's one thing I don't understand from your
description, you wrote:
"WPA-PSK__(Very Hard to Break).
WPA-AES__(Not functionally Breakable)
WPA2____ (Not functionally Breakable)."
What is the difference between "very hard to break" and "not
functionally breakable"? WPA2 is best from what I've read, right?
I only use the current security settings since I read about them being
the best/safest but maybe there are better settings that I don't know
of. Therefore I'll list the settings that I can select from here:
***Topcom SKYR@CER WBR 7121gmr NAS router:
can only select DISABLE, WEP, WPA-PSK or WPA-RADIUS. In WPA-PSK I set
it to WPA2-Mixed and not WPA2-AES or WPA2-TKIP.
***Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN card in my laptop has following
settings in xp:
WPA2-PSK with AES encryption.

People in this thread talk about disabling my security settings to see
if the problem persists which I don't understand. I thought security
is very important and now I should turn it off to solve the connection
problem? That's like someone would ask me to turn off my firewall and
ask my ip address. I probably misunderstood you so convince me
otherwise if I'm wrong.

Just to be sure we're still talking about the same: From time to time
at very irregular intervals my wireless connection is interrupted and
the systray icon says "acquiring network address" after which the
connection is re-established. Very annoying when you're just
downloading a page or a file.

Thanks all for worrying with me;-)

Alex <ad1***@telenet.be> wrote in
The bandwidth of a G network is about three channels to each side of
the channel you set it to.  The three channel settings that won't
interfere with each other are channels 1, 6, and 11.  One of these
three channels should be your best bet.

Keep in mind that 2 GHz cordless phones share the same band as well.

[...]
This should be plenty close enough.

Probably about ten years trying to crack the code vs a lifetime.

For home use, yes.

The idea here is to run some tests to see if the encryption is
contributing to your problems.  It probably wouldn't hurt to turn
encryption off for an hour or so while you determine if this is a
contributing factor to your drops.  Someone would have to be stalking
you to notice that your security went away for an hour.  My neighbor
has never used any security at all and so far hasn't had problems
(that I know of).

Something seems to interfere with the wireless connection at random
times.  This could be the cordless phone ringing, or something that
could cause your encryption to lose sync. 

Another possibility is wireless networks can have a tendency to
'roam'.  If your computer sees another accessible wireless network
that momentarily appears to be stronger in the vicinity, it could try
to 'roam' over to that network which would cause a break in any
existing connection.  If you open the Device Manager (Start->Run->
devmgmt.msc) then double-click on your wireless adapter, then click
on the "Advanced" tab, you might find a "Roaming Tendency" setting. 
Changing this setting to "Conservative" (as opposed to Aggressive)
will help keep your computer locked-in to your own router.

HTH,
  John

So what does this mean in practice? If my neighbour is for instance
using channel 6, I could use channel 1 or 11 to avoid interference?
That's going to be tough since netstumbler is picking up several
channels from different neigbours. I think it was 1, 6, 9 and 11 and
I'm on channel 5.

It's not my cellphone, maybe a neighbour's cellphone. But I can't ask
my neighbours to stop using the phone, can I :)  

I found a slider that I moved to the far left (your client will not
roam). It doesn't seem to solve the issue. I still get disconnected
for a few seconds every 5min approximately, even with my laptop within
1meter from the router.

Alex <ad1***@telenet.be> wrote in
Show quoteHide quoteIf you're on channel 5, then the broadcast on channel 6 would overlap
with your settings.  As close as you are to your station, though,
this shouldn't be a problem.

Cordless phones, not cellphones, might interefere but shouldn't do
much more than slow things down a bit.

Show quoteHide quoteOne other setting is a "Allow computer to turn off device to save
power" which could be causing your computer to shut down the network
card when it thinks it's not being used.  See:

"How to disable power management for a network adapter when you
deploy Windows XP"
  <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837058>

HTH,
  John

I was almost going to reply that the issue is solved but sadly enough
not yet. I have the impression though that now the connection gets
lost less often but it's just a feeling. I unchecked the tickbox that
says "allow computer to turn off device to save power"
Oops, I just got disconnected again but this time it didn't reconnect
shortly thereafter. I opened "view wireless networks" list and hit
"refresh network list" but couldn't see my SSID. Hit "refresh network
list" another 10 times or so and then suddenly the ssid appeared.
Selected it and hit connect button but it wouldn't connect. Hit cancel
and then I noticed it connected itself again automatically (??!**$!)

Another thing is that I can see a second wireless icon in the systray.
The one I normally use to connect is "wireless network connection 2"
which is an "Intel wireless wifi link 4965agn" and the other one is
called "wireless network connection" and is a "Globe Trotter Module
HSDPA Network Card" but never seems to be connected. When I hit a
button on the laptop a "wireless selector" menu appears with bluetooth
off, WLAN on and UMTS off. I have no clue at all what these are for.

Alex <ad1***@telenet.be> wrote in
Look in your Network Connections control panel and see if you see this
second wireless adapter.  If you do, right click on it and select
"Disable".  It could be that you have both a wireless card and a built-
in motherboard wireless function that interfere with each other.  (Also
check your device manager -- Start->Run->devmgmt.msc)

HTH,
  John

On Jan 9, 5:49 am, John Wunderlich <jwunderl***@lycos.com> wrote:
Now why didn't I think of that myself, seems logical to me. I just
disabled the Globe Trotter network card and it is confirmed in the
device management panel with a red cross and the icon doesn't appear
in the systray anymore. Now I'll have to use the computer for some
time to see if the problem still persists. My nose is telling me we
are getting closer to the solution. I will keep you informed and I
hope it will be solved now. If not, could it be that the problem is in
the router? I ask because I have another thread here:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage/browse_thread/thread/120bb4a05415ad19?hl=en
about my Maxtor portable hard drive which is connected via a USB cable
to my router's built in NAS USB port. To summarise the article, while
browsing through the hard drive's folders over the network, explorer
often hangs and CTRL+ALT+DEL is the only solution, also data transfer
is very slow which is probably because my router's usb port is usb1.1
as someone mentioned, and I cannot always access MSHOME in explorer
and get the message "mshome is not accessible. You may not have
permission to use the network resources..." In other words, I am
considering to buy a new router.

OK while typing this post I didn't get disconnected from the wireless
now that I've disabled the second wireless card. May be good luck
though, I'll have to test it for some more time.

I've tested the connection for some time now with the second adapter
disabled as you said. It didn't solve the problem, I still get
connection interruptions.

I also managed to change the security settings this time. I tried with
all security disabled (open as well as shared network in windows
wireless control panel), with WEP, WPA-PSK(TKIP) and WPA2-PSK(AES).
And this with combinations of roaming aggressiveness zero (slider far
left) and default (slider in the middle). Allow windows to turn off
this device was disabled all the time. I still get connection
interruptions with these settings. It takes a lot of time too to test
since sometimes I used the laptop like 10-15min without disconnections
but sometimes I get disconnected twice in 2min. I guess I'll have to
keep experimenting with the settings until I find the best one and in
the meantime I'm looking out for a new router because I have other
issues with the one I have now in another thread. I don't think my
laptop is the cause since at work I don't get connection
interruptions, although I must admit I don't use my laptop a lot at
work and I don't have time to test it extensively.

Alex <ad1***@telenet.be> wrote in
Show quoteHide quoteI have no further ideas unless you want to try to borrow another
router.  You seem to have a really stubborn problem.

--- John

I will look out for another router.

Thanks anyway for your help everyone, I really appreciate it

Alex

I now have another router (Linksys WRT610N) and the problem seems to
be solved. No more wireless connection interruptions.

Thanks all for the help

I have been struggling with similar intermittent connection problems, but
only on a new Acer laptop running Vista. No problems with my other 2
computers running XP. I successfully connect the Vista computer by power
resetting the router (D-Link, 802.11g) after any time the XP computers
connect to the network. I'm on the discussion groups to figure out what Vista
is doing to me. 

I also had to disable IPv6 protocol in the network panel before I could
connect at all. If you are running Vista you may want to try this.

In your troubleshooting simplify as much as possible and then work back out
to your full configuration. Try a cabled connection to your router before
moving back to the wireless connection. Turn off all the other computers to
eliminate compounding issues across the network.

By the way, I connect through the router to my home network just fine. It is
the connection through the router to the DSL connected internet that keeps
dropping for me.

Show quoteHide quote

On Jan 9, 12:20 am, Alex <ad1***@telenet.be> wrote:
Show quoteHide quoteThe Globe Trotter HSDPA Card is for connection over a mobile phone
network so is not technically a
WiFi card - it works on Cell phone frequencies not 802.11g / n

Alister

Alister <alister.***@hotmail.co.uk> wrote in
Show quoteHide quoteI did not know that.  But it still is a wireless device and probably
has the same default metric in the routing table as the 802.11g
network.  If the HSDPA card were to disconnect or reconnect, that
would cause a change in the routing table which could cause the
internet connection to switch away from the 802.11g network if they
both have the same metric.  It's still best to have only one wireless
connection active at a time and if it were me, I'd disable the HSDPA
card when running on 802.11g -- or at the very least manually assign
the HSDPA card a higher metric.

-- John

On Jan 10, 2:22 am, John Wunderlich <jwunderl***@lycos.com> wrote:
Show quoteHide quoteI agree totally, and in fact for me to say it is not a WiFi device is
ridiculous really - In my defence I meant it is not a Wireless
Ethernet Device using 802.11 Protocols.

I agree with what you say about the routing table entries also, but
from my experience with HSDPA devices they are normally software
controlled and have to be specifically instructed to connect by a
piece of client software - they don't attempt a connection
automatically when a network is detected, like WiFi does. From what
the OP has written I am not sure if he was even aware that he had this
functionality so it is unlikely that the HSDPA card is the cause of
the issues.

Alister

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