This evening I’ve been having a hell of a time with my wireless connection. I have an aging Microsoft G router, which is located in our living room. I haven’t been able to stay connected to it tonight for more than a couple of minutes at a time. My work laptop can find the wireless network but not connect to it (even though it was able to earlier today). I think my 360 has even been having trouble with it.
When I move closer to the router, I can stay connected for longer. When I am connected, signal strength always shows as “excellent,” but speed is up and down.
Is loss of signal strength a common symptom of a dying wireless router?
Thanks!
I wouldn’t rule out interference either. A few months ago I swear I was about to smash my router with a hammer. It would report good signal, but drop connection every once in awhile and seem to be slower than I thought it should be.
Now? Perfect.
Change channels on the router, and change the position of it as well. 2.4 is getting pretty crowded, the best you could do to check is hook up directly to your dsl/cable modem and compare.
Interference was the first thing I considered, but nothing has changed in this house in the last 24 hours. I did change the channel just now, and the problem persists.
Is anyone successfully using a current N router with the older Microsoft wireless adapter? Looks like that may be where we’re headed.
after the initial ‘you can fry your router if you aren’t careful’ phase, getting third-party firmware (need to pick the right, exact router) like Tomato or DD-WRT on one of these routers makes them run really, really well.
it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t show up on the Xbox compatibility list–my 360 works fine with mine.
In a worst case scenario (your neighborhood just got a lot busier in the 2.4 Gig range) you can probably locate a second access point closer to where you sit with your laptop and get better coverage (and speed.) Either run an ethernet line to that second access-point, or extend it from your router using something like powerline-ethernet.
How many other wireless nodes are you detecting? My apartment building has 15 within range of my apartment (every single one locked down!) but 9 or 10 all use the same channel. I’ve had less issues with interferences since i switched to a different channel (1 6, 11 being the three channels of choice).
Okay, follow-up question. It’s my understanding that signal strength is better with an N router than a B/G router. So will an N router communicate more reliably with a G client, such as the 360’s wireless adapter?
No, N and G are different frequencie bands so your N-capable router wouldn’t even be using that to communicate with the 360. There’s also no way an N/G/B router’s G-band would be better than a G/B router’s, although I’ve seen marketing stuff that tries to claim otherwise. I don’t know if that stuff is for real or just snakeoil, though.
Well, I decided to throw more money at the problem and bought a dual-band B/G/N router and a dual-band N gaming adapter (which I didn’t know existed until yesterday). So now the 360 is connected via N to a network on the 5Ghz frequency, and other devices are connected to the silmultaneous 2.4Ghz network the router’s running. Results: it’s running like a dream now. I didn’t even have to tweak the Quality of Service settings on the router (which is good, since I didn’t have any idea how).
I just purchased a wireless-N mini-card for my laptop to replace the A/B/G one that’s in there now. I think this will address the connectivity problems I’ve been having with it. It was only $35 from Amazon.
