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Wireless Internet: Continuously Losing Internet Access Not Signal

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I have been having this problem for about a month or more now and it’s really bugging me.

I am continuously (at least every 24 to 48 hours) losing my internet connection.

I am connected wirelessly. The router and modem are approximately 16 feet away from me. Signal strength is excellent. When I lose access, I usually do either of the following:

Repair the connection (this sometimes works, but often it fails at disabling the network card)

So, when that doesn’t work, I usually go to Device Manager and disable and enable the wireless card there. When that process is able to be completed, I am back online. There are however many instances in which it freezes at the disabling of the card and I am left with no choice other than to restart my computer.

Unplugging and re-plugging in the router and modem worked as a solution today and at other times, but I usually do the previous steps first. Regardless, even if this was to always result in me getting my internet connection back, I shouldn’t be losing internet access so many times.

Below are ipcocnfig, tracert, and ping results that I got when I was unable to connect to the internet.

I really hope someone can help me figure out what’s going on.

Oh, one other thing; Usually I can still connect wirelessly on my phone when my computer won’t connect.

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

ipconfig /all

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : Admin
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Mixed
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcom 440x 10/100 Integrated Cont
roller
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-19-B9-65-A5-5B

Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Networ
k Connection
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-18-DE-14-F6-A6
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.15
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.1
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 68.87.74.162

tracert google.com

Tracing route to google.com [173.194.37.64]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 3 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.2.1
2 11 ms 21 ms 7 ms 73.230.139.1
3 10 ms 11 ms 12 ms xe-9-1-0-0-sur02.northdade.fl.pompano.comcast.ne
t [68.85.124.205]
4 19 ms 12 ms 23 ms te-0-1-0-1-ar03.northdade.fl.pompano.comcast.net
[68.85.127.69]
5 19 ms 12 ms 23 ms he-0-8-0-0-cr01.miami.fl.ibone.comcast.net [68.8
6.93.85]
6 39 ms 39 ms 28 ms pos-1-15-0-0-cr01.atlanta.ga.ibone.comcast.net [
68.86.86.197]
7 35 ms 31 ms 31 ms pos-0-2-0-0-pe01.56marietta.ga.ibone.comcast.net
[68.86.86.166]
8 30 ms 27 ms 31 ms 75.149.231.86
9 28 ms 27 ms 29 ms 72.14.239.100
10 28 ms 29 ms 27 ms 64.233.175.94
11 32 ms 26 ms 31 ms atl14s08-in-f0.1e100.net [173.194.37.64]

Trace complete.

ping google.com

Pinging google.com [173.194.37.64] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 173.194.37.64: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=54
Reply from 173.194.37.64: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=54
Reply from 173.194.37.64: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=54
Reply from 173.194.37.64: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=54

Ping statistics for 173.194.37.64:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 29ms, Maximum = 41ms, Average = 32ms

Topic

Clarifications

In reply to Wireless Internet: Continuously Losing Internet Access Not Signal

Clarifications

Just a guess…

In reply to Wireless Internet: Continuously Losing Internet Access Not Signal

This may or may not be helpful, but I had a client who was having similar issues for months and even changed ISPs and DSL modems. Turns out, they had a baby monitor. On a hunch, I told them to disable completely the baby monitor and then see how their connectivity was. With the baby monitor disabled, they no longer had any problems with dropped connections. So, look for any RFI sources. I wouldn’t have even thought to ask about those, but as I was asking about cordless phones, other wireless networks, etc. they happened to mention it. It’s worth a try if there’s anything in your environment similar to that.
I will say, the proximity of the wireless router to your laptop may rule out any RFI. But, it’s worth a shot. I thought it was a long shot but it ended up being the solution for that client.

Reponse To Answer

In reply to Just a guess…

That was what I was thinking as well, some sort of radio interference,
even something as benign as a cordless phone will sometimes cause
me problems.
The other possible problem is the ISPs IP addressing…are they using
dynamic IP addressing? If so, your WiFi device could be losing its lease
and needs to allow for on-the-fly re-leasing…so you may need to enable
dynamic IP addressing via DHCP in the WiFi router setup. (The clue
to this was the times when repairing the connection succeeded, or
when you had to restart your modem/router/WiFi device)

It might be software related

In reply to Wireless Internet: Continuously Losing Internet Access Not Signal

Does the problem still exists if the machine is hard wired to the router? This test can be revealing as to where the problem may be.

I know for a fact that browsers can become contaminated and will inhibit the internet connection, like with Conduit cookies, unvalidated add-ons and extensions and non standard search engines.

In effect, the poor browser is under attack and you are paying the price with intermittent connectivity caused by the contamination – which sounds like you temporarily fixing via resetting the routers and devices.

To this end, you may have a software problem and its not a hardware one.

More Info from Original Poster

In reply to Wireless Internet: Continuously Losing Internet Access Not Signal

I am new here and so I am updating this question here as I don’t see anywhere else above to do so.

To those that responded, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Here is my response and updated information.

I do not have any kind of interference near me. I do however have a cordless phone in the same room as the laptop, but it’s a DECT 6.0 which I do believe remember reading that it doesn’t cause interference with wireless internet connections. Anyhow, I have unplugged it for a few hours and still experienced the problem.

Now, regarding the wireless connection, I am also at times shown that I have been disconnected and also sometimes my computer tries to connect me to another wireless connection, but the signal strength would be too weak.

I have tried lately connecting by cable, but through the router and have had problems, but don’t remember the specifics.

[b]So, what I have done is avoided the router entirely and have been connected with the cable and the modem only. And for the past three days, I have experienced the following problem: late at night my connection gets extremely slow.[/b] The pages begin to open up but usually don’t completely open up. I have been using speedtest frequently to check my speed because of this problem and also because I called Comcast to lower my bill they offered me some promotion in which I am to be getting 12 MB/s and at about 20 something dollars lower than the 1 MB/s plan I was paying for. Under normal conditions, I get about anywhere from 20 something to 30 something MB/s of speed.

[b]However, when my internet gets very slow, the speeds I got were 0.1 something and 0.2 something MB/s. When this happens, I unplug the modem, then plug it back in. After my computer re-connects, no page opens up at first. Wirelessly, I would be re-connected faster. I have to do the repair option about twice and then I am able to open up pages on the web. I then check the speed, and I get the normal fast speeds of 20 and 30 something MB /s again.[/b]

[b]Possible Reason for problem:[/b] It’s only lately that I have had this problem (a few months now), but in the past, I have had problems with cable tv and slower than expected speeds for my internet, and the first thing the technician says when he sees the connections that the cable installer did is that the connection is split too many times and is weakening the signal. They said that they were going to try to split the connection at the pole or something of that sort so that I can have the numerous connections I desire, but for some reason that didn’t happen.

Looking forward to your thoughts on this.

[Author]

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