General wireless networking connection

I just installed the Asus RT-N56U Dual-Band Gigabit Wireless-N Router. I'm running Win 7 home premium, using Comcast as my ISP. I connect most often with a relatively new Toshiba laptop, also running Win 7 Home Premium. Most days, the wireless connection is stable and fast. However, every couple of days I notice I will lose the wireless connection. No apparent reason. I try to disconnect, reconnect, run the troubleshooter, etc, but no luck. When I reboot my laptop, the connection resumes as if there never was a problem. It does not happen often, but it is really annoying.

Are there any logical troubleshooting steps I can take for this?

thanks.

 

just so I understand you correctly, you have two computers running on the same wireless network and only one is affected during this brief time that you can't connect, is this correct?

and it is the toshiba that is having the connection problems.

can you tell me how old is your toshiba, could it have malware on it, how long does your router lease the IP Address.

Thanks

 

sorry for the too brief description.

normally I only have one laptop connecting to this wireless network, and that is the Toshiba...it is about 6 months old, and I have never had any problems with it. i use Norton, and so far have not seemed to have picked up any viruses,malware, etc. the new Asus router had some great reviews, so i bought it last week.....90% of the time, my toshiba connects just fine and the internet speed seems very fast....no problem. but every couple of days, the internet connection just drops....I get a yellow warning icon at the bottom of the screen, and when i open up network/sharing center, or troubleshoot problems, i cannot resolve the issue. so, i reboot the toshiba, and everything goes back to normal.....for another 3 or 4 days until it happens again. not sure if this could be a router problem, a comcast modem problem, a toshiba problem or what. just wondering how i might troubleshoot this?

 

well this makes me think of a couple of different things, so I will go ahead and tell you first then tell you my suggested action. It does not sound like a hardware problem, I don't think that it is a problem with the modem for sure, it could be a setting in the router or a setting in the computer. I have owned 3 toshibas and that is almost the only thing that the rest of my family owns and i have never had this problem before. that is not saying that it can't be a problem with the computer maybe a faulty network card or something.

Now what i would like you to do is while your computer is connected to the internet fine open your command prompt and type "ipconfig" and re post it here and if you have the problem again before you restart your computer do the same thing copy it into a Notepad file and upload it here.

next what do you do to your computer on a normal basis, Shut it down or Hibernate it?

Then check your router settings paying attention to the Lease Time for an IP address. Because what it sounds like at first is that the router is not renewing the ip address correctly so that is what is causing the problems but right now this is all speculation, hopefully with your answers I can narrow it down even more.

 

hey tomg,

it's the dual band auto feature. the router will auto switch the 2.4 ghz speed to the 5 ghz speed and visa versa depending on what it senses. the 5 ghz is used for streaming high content video (HD movies and other media etc..) from the net.

go into the router setting and set it to use the 2.4 speed only (you can set it to 5ghz if you like but whatever you decide, pick one speed. Id try 2.4 at first to see how you go) also set the channel to either 6 or 11 and make sure the wireless range is set to 20 and not 40. next, reboot the router and reboot the machines.

*this problem was reported by a client that runs a bar. Also, macbooks would lose the connection too. Once we made the changes all was well.

Techsent

 

techsent...thanks, i will try that now....also, can you please advise if "WPS" should be activated?

 

you're welcome. yes, id activate WPS as someone else could be connecting to your network and sapping the bandwidth as well.

go with wpa2 instead of wep as it is more secure.

Techsent

 

thanks again....works like a charm...no drops so far, and the speed is a bit faster too....

appreciate the help

 

np, welcome. hopefully, that's the fix.

Techsent

 

I just purchased the ASUS RT-N56U and also experiencing the dropped connection. An interesting fact is that all my devices, wired and wireless (smartphones, desktops and laptops) experience the same dropped connection. Once my computers power down and restarted the next day, there is no network connection and I can not access the admin page. After a few minutes and page refreshes everything is fine. My family complains that their smartphones are timing out when connecting to the internet via wifi. Could all this be the result of short dhcp lease? Thanks