The wireless follies!

For some reason, my wife’s computer keeps disconnecting from the wireless ethernet connection. And I mean constantly-- every 10-15 minutes. When it’s connected, speeds seem good and signal quality is “excellent”, but these constant disconnects are driving her nuts.

Here’s the config:
D-Link 614+ wireless router/access point
D-Link 520 PCI wireless card

Latest drivers and firmware on everything as of 3 weeks ago. Everything is slow vanilla 802.11b, no bleeding edge 802.11g or 802.11a crap.

She is exactly one room over from the 614+ router/ap, so there’s a grand total of one wall between them-- maybe 15 feet?

There isn’t any pattern to the disconnecting that I can tell-- no microwaves, cordless phone usage, etc. It’s frequent, but not regular.

The odd thing is that the downstairs access point (D-link 900-AP+) for the Tivo stays connected to the very same access point without any problems at all. I just checked the logs on its HTTP interface and yep, it’s been connected for a week plus!

Any ideas? I’m relatively new to the wireless stuff, but this perplexes me.

Power-saving mode?

Good call, Jason. If that doesn’t fix it, then my question is:

Has this been happening since you got the wireless card?

Also try changing the wireless channel and/or ratcheting down the speed to 2MB. My router was working fine until someone near me got one, too, and then it freaked out (same problems as you) until I changed its channel.

Many newer NICs will automatically shut down when they notice you are looking at goatse.cx or hotmale.com