My Router fails me..... Again.

[chrislo]

Hello again, I came here in the past with problems with my internet connection. I called Linksys and they made me upgrade the routers firmware and that seems to work for the time being. That was a month ago. Today I went online to play Battlefield 2142 (Titan Match) and when I boarded the Titan my ping shot up and the game shut down on me (Happens once in awhile, not often).

I went back to play on another server (Conquest) and my ping was get close to 500. Punkbuster disconnected me from the server. So I went to broadband reports to check my speed and ping and it was bad. My upload and download speeds were lower than normal and my ping was terrible at an average of 166-227.

First I wanted to make sure the problem wasn't only on my computer so I checked it on my laptop (Which uses a different internal wireless card BTW) and I got the same deal. So at that point I was getting worried and paranoid that my cable company was ripping me off. So I got my Laptop and wired directly into my modem with an Ethernet cable and went to broadband reports to check my speed again.

Guess what? My speed was good. My download speed was between 3.2-6.1 Mbps, and my upload speed was about 600-700 kbits. My ping was between 30-33. I even think the webpages loaded a little faster. I did the test 4 times both wireless and wired to make sure the readings I was getting was accurate. I have 10 Mbps service and this is about average of what I get from them. So now I know its not my cable company and most likely not my wireless networking cards. In a way I am relieved because if it was a problem with my cable company they would try to find a way to weasel out of the problem.

So now I have narrowed it down to my router, which is a Linksys WRT54GS. I owned this router for two years since I got my laptop. In my previous home I used it mostly as a wired router (Only the laptop was wireless) and since the laptop was not powerful enough for gaming I couldn't fully gage how well my wireless network was. For the past 8 months I have been using it as a fully wireless router (2 Desktops, 1 Laptop, and my Xbox 360). Most of the time we only use between 1-3 of these computers at a time. Except for last month the wireless network has worked fairly well for me. A dropped connection during an incoming phone call here and there but nothing that bothered me. I also noticed that the connection quality and transfer speeds varied greatly. It went from good to very good at 54 Mbps to good and sometimes but rarely low and around 11 Mbps.

All of these computers are fairly close to the router. My gaming machine is in the next room about 10-15 feet from the router through a wall. The second desktop is about 15-20 feet away from the router through the wall. My Xbox 360 is about 10-15 away from the router through the wall. My laptop is the furthest from the router, its on the floor below in the kitchen at about 30 feet away through the ceiling.

So that brings me to my questions: What do I do? How do I find the problem? What is the problem? How do I fix it? Right now I don't want to call Linksys. I am hoping that the problem corrects itself between now and the time someone responds to my question on this forum. If not I will wait until Tuesday when I got time to ask them. So if you can help me I would be extremely grateful. Thanks.

Here is a sample of the bad ping I am getting:

 

[slaphappylinksys]

have you tried tried defaulting the router (turning all the settings back to stock) or if you dont want to do that unplugging the router for a while, i know that linksys routers tend to get moody especially if they get hot once and a while thank god it hasnt happened to me lately, knock on wood. if it doesnt work, and no one gets back to you... hello linksys tech support... i hate doing it myself but if ya have to ya have to.

 

[chrislo]

Problem Solved

Thanks for the tip I will keep in mind if it happens in the future. But I called Linksys and it was something else totally different. Linksys tech support first told me to plug in my laptop directly to the router. I did the speed test at broadband reports and the ping was normal. So he went on to say it was something environmental screwing around with the wireless signal. I was starting to get worried thinking he would say "Since it isn't a problem directly with the router we can't help you".

So I went on saying how can it work for 8+ months then crap out on me? I said I live in a rural area with very few people (In fact most people here are snow birds except for 2 neighbors in the immediate area) and the only wireless device I know of in immediate proximity to my router was my 5.8 GHz multi handset phone. He said even though they work on different spectrums the phone can still interrupt the router.

So since I could not change the frequency on my phone I did on my router with instructions from the Linksys guy. He made me move up the channel and change something with the timing (I forgot what it was called but he made me take it down from 100 to 50). After that I did the speed test again on broadband reports and pining a website with DOS and my ping was back to normal.

So all along it was the phone interfering with the router, I should have knew because sometimes when we got incoming calls I lost my connection to the router for a few seconds. I thought the guy was BS me since I figured if it was the phone I would have had the problems from day one. So now everything is fine, I can play BF 2142 and my other games, and most importantly of all I am relieved.

Here is a sample of my present normal ping: