Wireless cut out

[godlyatheist]

I had moved to a new place and they have TWC cable with the Ubee DDW365 gateway. Since moving their, I've noticed constant loss of wireless that persists until I do something about it. The losses are sudden and have no explanation. Usually, it happens to my laptop with Realtek 8188CE wifi card running Windows 7. Sometimes, the loss will be across all devices on the network. I usually get an yellow exclamation mark on the wifi icon in the task bar and from that point on the computer cannot reconnect to the network(always fails with the message that my password is incorrect). Lights on the gateway shows it's fine. I checked inssider and I see an identical wifi(same name, same signal strength) with a MAC address of 00-00-00-00-00 that shows up at times. I don't know if this problem is related to the gateway or my wifi card. Usually, I have to disable my wifi card in device managers, flush dns, reenable to get wifi back. Has anyone experienced anything similar?

 

[L&LD]

Have you tried updating (or re-installing) your clients wireless drivers?

 

[godlyatheist]

I have loaded the latest available driver from Realtek. The thing is, the disconnects happens very frequently and I stopped tracking when it's just my laptop and when it's all devices. When I called TWC, they said it's a wi-fi interference problem, which is obviously untrue since I can see very little interference and a relatively strong signal.

 

[htismaqe]

Do you have another wireless AP you can test with?

 

[L&LD]

With all devices disconnecting, interference is a high possibility. Especially with a WiFi access point with only 2.4GHz capability. Are there microwave ovens around you?


Try using a different channel (test them one by one, no matter what the inssider numbers may show).

I would also put the Tx power of the Ubee at max if you can.

Another possible solution may be to ensure your ssid name is 'simple' and possibly not hidden.

 

[godlyatheist]

Do you have another wireless AP you can test with?

I'll try it with a TP-link that I have with DD-WRT on it.

With all devices disconnecting, interference is a high possibility. Especially with a WiFi access point with only 2.4GHz capability. Are there microwave ovens around you?

Try using a different channel (test them one by one, no matter what the inssider numbers may show).

I would also put the Tx power of the Ubee at max if you can.

Another possible solution may be to ensure your ssid name is 'simple' and possibly not hidden.

The gateway is in the living room, the microwave is 1 wall and 15 ft away so I don't think that's an issue. I'll try the other channels but I don't think the Ubee can adjust Tx power. The SSID is very simple and not hidden.

 

[fistv]

Are the devices going to sleep ?

 

[stevech]

With all devices disconnecting, interference is a high possibility. Especially with a WiFi access point with only 2.4GHz capability. Are there microwave ovens around you?


Try using a different channel (test them one by one, no matter what the inssider numbers may show).

I would also put the Tx power of the Ubee at max if you can.

Another possible solution may be to ensure your ssid name is 'simple' and possibly not hidden.

very unlikely it's interference like this.

 

[htismaqe]

very unlikely it's interference like this.

I agree with this.

 

[L&LD]

Why the doubt? I've seen a 2.4GHz network drop the wireless when the office wireless telephone was answered. Yes, 2.4GHz phone.

 

[htismaqe]

I've seen interference affect individual devices but never just drop the entire band all at once. That sound more like a radio resetting or something.

 

[L&LD]

Might it not be resetting because of the interference it detects?

 

[htismaqe]

Might it not be resetting because of the interference it detects?

I suppose that's possible but to the original point, if the router is responding to channel interference by dropping the radio, the cable company should probably replace it.

 

[L&LD]

Totally agree that it should be replaced.

But while you have it; trying different channels may prove useful. After all, the same model in the same environment with the same devices might very well respond the same.

 

[htismaqe]

Totally agree that it should be replaced.

But while you have it; trying different channels may prove useful. After all, the same model in the same environment with the same devices might very well respond the same.

That's why I suggested also testing with a completely different device.

It sucks but we as consumers need to spend a lot of time keeping our service providers honest.

 

[sfx2000]

If it's been doing this since day 1 - either you have a bad CM Gateway, or possibly a bad/noisy cable connection - DOCSIS 3 does allow for a device to reboot if it gets out of sync with the CMTS head-end.

 

[stevech]

Might it not be resetting because of the interference it detects?

No, it should degrade in throughput but not crash/reboot. But it's unlikely interference is the issue.

 

[godlyatheist]

Ok, there is definitely something wrong with the gateway itself. When the connection drops across all devices, the uptime on the gateway is reset. This tells me the gateway itself crashed. It also will reset a couple times in a row before the connection is back. I'm going to call TWC and have them replace the gateway.

Right now the uptime is 6h, which means it crashed at least 1 time while I was asleep.

 

[godlyatheist]

Ok, I put that gateway in bridge mode and put in a Tp-link Wdr3600 with DD-WRT. Something is wrong with the Tp-link since I drop every 10 sec so I went back to just the RG. Now I upgraded my wifi card to the Intel 7260AC. Signal is much stronger now (-47dbm vs -70dbm) and roaming aggressiveness is set to low. I've had 3 days of stable connection. Thanks to everyone that helped.