Why would my wireless cut in and out every minute or so?

Posted by Strilanc on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Strilanc
Published on 2010-05-18T01:30:45Z Indexed on 2010/05/18 1:32 UTC
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I've been having problems with my wireless. I moved to a new apartment, and the wireless seems incredibly unreliable. Sometimes it will be stable for hours until, all of a sudden, it starts cutting in and out. I'll get 30-90 seconds of normal behavior, then 5-30 seconds of nothing, then repeat. Sometimes the connection will stop working entirely, until I power-cycle the router.

It is extremely, extremely annoying. Surfing the web isn't too bad, assuming you can stand the random 5-30 second waits. But some connections are sensitive enough to timeout, and it certainly makes multiplayer games unplayable.

Facts:

  • I confirmed the problem using ping google.com -t. I get normal traffic, interspersed with bursts of "Request timed out.".
  • I've never had this problem before with this laptop.
  • I didn't bring my own router or modem to the apartment. I'm using what the old tenant had.
  • Hooking directly to the modem via an ethernet cable results in a stable connection.
  • Temporarily cutting power to the router sometimes fixes the problem. Sometimes it doesn't.
  • I reset the router, but the problem remained.
  • Apparently the previous tenant had issues with the internet, but I don't know what they were specifically.
  • The router is a D-Link DIR-615, and their tech support is useless.

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