Wireless network "comes and goes"

[cydewaze]

Around a year ago, I purchased a D-Link DIR-632 for my home network. I have a bunch of hard-wired devices, and the 632 has 8 ethernet ports, so it seemed like the perfect option. The wireless is mainly used for laptops and cell phones.

A couple of months ago, my Android phone got its Jellybean OS update, and I noticed shortly after that I could only find our home network around half the time. The other half of the time it said, "not in range". I assumed this was phone-related, so I pursued that route.

This weekend, my wife's laptop has started having the same problem, and when she complains about having lost Internet access, I check my phone to find that it's also lost connection. Now I'm starting to suspect a router problem.

For my wireless settings, I have:
* Always enabled
* 802.11 mixed n, g, and b
* Channel 8
* 20MHz channel width
* Visible SSID
* WPA-Personal
* WPA Only (wife's laptop is too old for WPA2, though I've tried "Auto" for here to no avail)
* TKIP and AES cypher
* 3600s interval

I post these in case one of them is a known culprit, but I can't see how any of these would be an issue since they were all fine for nearly a year. Likewise, I can't see how Wi-Fi would randomly cut on and off. I just don't get any of it, but before going out and buying a new router (and possibly having the same issues), I thought I'd ask in case anyone has been down this road before.

 

[inzone]

Have you tried a different channel ? Maybe 6 , 9 or 11 ?

 

[cydewaze]

I've tried a few, but all in the middle of the range. Some years ago I read that routers on "auto" will pick channels toward the end of the range (1, 11) and the middle ones would be less "crowded". Silly I suppose, since I live out in the country and can only see at most 4 other Wi-Fi networks.

 

[lonecosmos]

Have you added anything else to your network recently? Printer, tv, wifi HDD, anything?

 

[cydewaze]

No, not really. I pretty much noticed it when my phone got the JB update. Today it was the same thing again. No wireless all morning, then suddenly I'm connected in the afternoon. It's almost like it's on a timer, but it's set to be always available.

 

[inzone]

What you can do is go into the routers internal settings and under the settings for leases and such see what the help pages say about it. There can be a setting in there that your not noticing or don't realize what it does and it's got you on some kind of timer.

 

[cydewaze]

I think I'm going to do a hard reset and put all my info back in. This means I have to remember all my passwords. Yuck!

 

[cydewaze]

After a hard reset (button in the back of the router) and setting it up all over again - same problem. I wish I knew for sure it was the router and not the phone. I'd hate to get a new router and have the same exact problem.

 

[cydewaze]

Last night I ran across the site for the DD-WRT firmware, which has completely solved ALL the wireless problems. For the sake of people finding this thread via Google, the new firmware is here:

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/D-Link_DIR-632