wireless network failed

Hi, just a query today.

I have a wireless network set up at home and run three laptops on it. I t work s as it should 90% of the time but every noow and then one of thelaptops will lose connection and need reconnecting. It seems to be only when two or more are in use at the same time. Not a problem at a ll because it is rare and quickly and easily remidied.

However, my sons friend brought his laptop round and both of them went to his room to chat on MSN and use internet. (I set his laptop to use our wireless) They would have been sat within a couple of yards of each other and were in the same conversations with other people on MSN when they both sent a message at the same time and immediately the wireless network went down. No computers in the house had a connection. In two years this has never happened.

This problem was resolved easily but at a length of time that i dont want to have to do it often.

Could the problem be caused by

Too many computers connected at once. (at the time four)
Too little distance between two of the computers when in use for the same activity.
Anything else i can't think of.

Or was it just one of those things and i am reading too much into coincedence

Very odd. I actually can't think of anything obvious that it might be.
If you could post the specific details of the wireless router, as well as the laptops (or the cards used in them if you know) that could help others diagnose the issue.
I can't see that 4 laptops would cause anything to lose a signal though.

Could something else be interfering, like a microwave or water running?

I will gather the other info but there were no microwaves on (they are not even plugged in when not being used). But water? how could that affect the system?
I ask because funny enough there is a water waste pipe running down from the bathroom within a conduit just 12- 18 inches from the router and modem. When the sink or bath upstairs are emptied the water can be heard runing down.

Okay
Laptops Two Dells (inspiron 1501 and Inspiron 1100), IBM thinkpad x31 and the visitors Acer which is all but new.

Dell, 1501, IBM and acer all have wireless whereas the older dell 1100 runs a belkin usb wirless adapter

Router Phillips snb5600

Modem motorola sb5100

Although it's a bit old, have a read of this:
Wireless networking roundup 2
Particularly from "Moving faster" onwards. Some good principles there. I'll think more about your setup.

Yes i see about the water situation though i cant se that it's much of a problem in this case as everything works fine the vast majority of the time.

I think you are right, since the water pipes are fixed and there permanently, it wouldnt be an occasional problem (although there is a funny anecdote of somewhere down south, Brighton perhaps, where an ISP provided wireless access to a whole block of flats, except when it became foggy / misty, the whole area lost connectivity due to moisture in the air absorbing it).

So anyway, this appears to be your phillips router.
It's a b/g type, and quite standard it seems.
The Inspiron 1501 claims to have "Hyperconnect wireless" which i've never heard of, but is clearly a marketing term.

I'm still scratching my head. Is the original complaint, the '2 laptops sending messages over MSN at the same time' a repeatable issue?
The only thing i can think about is something to do with NAT and packets being sent to different machines over the same port or something, but my guess is that modern technology would account for this.

To be honest, i'm out of my depth i think now, sorry. Anyone else?

Hi again and thanks for yours replies MSIC.

The closest this has come to happening before is when one of the kids complain their internet access is down (on two ocassions just as i connected with my laptop) for no apperant reason. But as stated this usually means just starting the connection after a restart.
I think until it does occur again there will be no way of knowing if was just a random event or not.

I am half tempted to invite Acer boy around and try and repeat the fault.

Thanks again

You said it took a long time to fix - what did you have to do?

Well i tried everything i could possibly think of without resetting the router and this is what took the most time.
I didn't want to reset the router because it was a nightmare to set up even with the help of Phillips technical services and also i have lost the software and manuals.
I can't remember what the exact problem was but it took a while to sort.

Eventually i turned everything off to reset everything and when i turned everything back on problem resolved.
I thought originally it was something i did prior to restart that cured the problem but now in hindsight i overlooked the fact that al the computers in the house had changed and the new ones now auto detect the wireless network meaning i didn't need the software to make certain settings and just resetting the router was the solution not anything i did.
Meaning hopefully i can try and cause the problem again and hopefully only have to reset to cure.

Only speculation, but I wonder if it it did just overload the router through an unlucky and statistically rare combination of traffic - which just caused the router to hang?

Almost impossibly to prove without some expensive real time packet monitoring stuff, and wait for it to happen again. But as a reset cleared it, yes it is inconvenient, but other than replace the router, I can't see any obvipous cause from what you have said.

One other thing was it just the wireless side that hung? Could ypou connect an ethernet cable at use it? And if not, could you telnet into the router (usually a case of last resort) I am not familiar with this device at all, so apologies if some of those facilities are not available on it.

No i didn't try the router with an ethernet cable but checked the modem with usb and that worked so definitely router.
Like i said at the start this was just a query to basically see if there was something i didn't understand about capacities of routers or b) should i limit the amount of computers in use at one time, especially two in such close proximity and for identical tasks.
I am very happy with the setup so taking into account the rarity of the fault and the ease of correction i won't be taking any more drastic action than banning the kids friends from bringing laptops around.

Telnet into router? Sorry more than i understand.

I will report back if it happens again.

Thanks to you both.

OK well good luck and get back to us.
The router manual by the way is on the web site that i linked to above, i read it yesterday and it appears to be a reasonably usual router.
In all honesty i can't think that the proximity of attached devices (either wireless or wired) has any affect at all, if anything the closer the better.

As for "telnet into the router" that's a bit beyond me, but I'd certainly open up your internet browser, go to your router's "home page" (something like 192.168.0.1) and see what's happening there - routers often have some diagnostic stuff, logs etc.

By the way, re-booting your router (either by sending it a specific command, pressing the re-boot button or just simply pulling the plug out) shouldn't make it lose all of its settings, and if that did cure the problem then great, that gives us something to work on (like it overheating for example).

Keep with it, we'll get there :)

PS Just to answer your specific questions
1) There will always be certain things that the most knowledgable of us won't know, so i'm sure to some people YOU are the IT expert
2)I can see no reason to limit the amount of use / users the router has.

Yes sorry by close proximity i mean't to each other. Not meaning close to router.
The two laptops were within feet of each other completing identical tasks (sending msn messages to each other) at some 15 metres from router but well within its range.
I agree this seems unlikely to/should not be the problem but combined with four computers on the go its all i could think of.

Being as the phillips technical support changed some of the standard settings and manual instruction settings i thought those settings would reset to default settings on power off. I am glad they didn't

As for the router home page that is something i was trying to do before resetting but the page always came back as unavailable. I presumed that this was because the wireless was unavailable but it still happens now. When setting up the router originally, access to the home page through that number was through an ethernet cable so maybe thats the only way?
I intend to do more work along these lines when it happens again.

I have decided to definitely try and trip the router again and told my son to bring Acer boy round and we will give it a go.

I will update soon. Thanks

The router contains its own webserver (which is how yiou can configure it with a browser) however that is only a front end to the router's operating system, which will have a command line interface.

To simplify: Telnetting is opening a connection at a terminal level and was orginal a serial link protocol, but it will work over TCP/IP.

How to: :)

Open up a windows command line window.

type telnet 192.168.1.1 (or whatever your routers local IP address is.

You should get some form of response, like login or password or both.

If you do, enter them when prompted. You can now orobably just enter the command reboot.

So what? Well, shows that the higher level functions (applications if you like) of the router have frozen, but the low level ones are still working. It probably isn't much help to you in fixing the problem.

But anyway, that what "telnetting into a router" is!