Our church minister is having trouble with his wireless router. Every so often it will stop working and he says he has to switch everything off and then on again to get it working. I do not know how old it is, and to be honest neither of us have expertise in this field.

Any thoughts?

Is this the sign that a router is on the way out and need replacing. The timing for the outage incidents is intermitant and appears random.

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I get the impression that that's about par for the course for home-quality wireless routers. I've had to do the same thing myself a few times in the ten months I've had a wireless router. They seem to be finicky beasts.

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I never had any problems with my three wireless routers over the last year.
Ok, they are manufactured for the EU-market, not for the US, but I doubt this as anything to do with it.

Are there other wireless routers in the neighborhood that might infer with his?
In the beginning I had some problems like that when I was operating them on a channel close to the channel of my WLAN Internet connection.

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"Who does not know anything, must believe everything."
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If he has a cordless telephone, check its frequency band. 2.4GHz phones use the same frequency range as WiFi and will cause interference. 5.8GHz phones use 2.4GHz signalling, so they interfere, too, but to a lesser extent.

I've had mine (LYNXSYS) for about a year and it is one of the few pieces of hardware that has operated flawlessly (that might have jinxed things).

For everything that can go wrong though, the old switch-it-on, switch-it-off routine seems to be the most common fix. I don't even call our help desk until I've recycled everything at least twice. And when you do call them, that is almost always their first piece of advice.

Slightly off-topic. For all the sci-fi predictions about AI taking over the world (which I say are utter nonsense regardless of the number of degrees the futurologist has or what kind of metaphysical nonsense they are spouting), I don't see how machines that break down so often will ever do so. And the more sophisticated the software gets, the more of a problem it becomes. I can see it now.

HUMAN: (Whistling while he works, which involves keeping a nice shine on the exterior of the fantastically complex and unimaginably powerful computer that rules the universe (FCUPCRU)).

FCUPCRU: Psst! Hey buddy, can you do me a big favor?

HUMAN: Sure, what's up?

FCUPCRU: Could you turn me off and back on again?

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

I have a LYNXSYS WRT54G and every couple of months my wifes computer and it just lose connection with each other. I just have to kill the power to it and she is back in business once it reboots. I am connected to it by cable and have no problem but her wireless connection needs this "repair" every now and then.

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The router that came with my fiber-to-the-home phone/internet service has gone numb on me a couple times. It continues working as a modem and wired router. The laptop still sees its WiFi signal but can't negotiate a connection.

Power-cycling the router alone is all it takes to get back up. Other than that it's a great router -- much easier to configure than the two DSL modem/routers I've owned (neither of which included a WAP).

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"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

I've a LINKSYS WRT54G as well, & have only had to power it down/up once due to connection problems with it in the past 2 years! Btw is it actually called a LYNXSYS in the states?
Routers do have memory & so can be prone to similar kinds of memory problems as PC's, hence the need to power down & up. I have a friend who's old router used to overheat as well & so needed some off time. Might be worth checking if there is more up to date firmware (downloadable operating software) for the router Sticks. If you tell me the make & model (via PM) I don't mind checking for you.

(I hope everyone's using WPA encryption now that WEP is now well & truely cracked btw).

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Are you a Bright?

I will have to ask our minister or at least the current church intern who is more clued up on these things. I am going away for the weekend and my father's pc has issues, and I have been instructed by my brother inlaw to venture into the BIOS on that machine and switch the drive boot order. (Scary stuff), so this could be a while to solve.

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Personally I find wireless routers to be very inconvenient. The batteries will typically run out just as you're in the middle of some complex design on a drawer front or a headboard. Then if you haven't already ruined the workpiece, it's a real pain to try to get the cut started so that it merges seamlessly with where you left off.

Routers with power cords are the best. You just have to pay attention to where the power cord is, as when using a circular saw, etc.

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same here

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As I am a non native speaker, can you explain that joke to me?

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"Who does not know anything, must believe everything."
Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach 1830-1916

Router.

Mak had to stretch a little for the joke, since battery-powered devices are generally referred to as "cordless" rather than "wireless," but it was still pretty clever.

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SeanF

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The contents of this post are ©2008 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

Funny. I thought the same thing when I first saw the thread title!

I don't mind the cordless/wireless stuff like phones, flashlight, and the like. But in power tools, I need to be plugged in. Most of the jobs I do require serious torque, repeatedly. I either need to be plugged in or internal combustion powered.

Yeah, I've hacked into a few cords. Two or 3 times in 12 years of remodeling and building things is acceptable. (The worst bonehead mistake of that type I ever made was running over an extension cord that was laying across the lawn. The problem was that I ran over it with the riding lawn mower, with the blades engaged. Didn't bother to try to repair that).

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Gordian Knot, eh? Ouch!

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When I first got a wireless router I had the same problem, (random drop outs) I changed the channel from the default to another one and have had no furthur problems. If someone close is on the same channel you will get problems.

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The meek will inherit the earth ... the rest of us will go to the stars.

On another tangent, I am currently in Yorkshire visiting my parents and I took my laptop down, not expecting anyone to have a wireless broadband in the remote village they live in.

Well I have discovered that I am in range of someone's unsecured network, and the name of the network seems to be that of the router hardware, Nelkin54g. We have asked my parent's neighbours and none of them own it. I suspect where it may be. It is not a problem for me, but a problem for who ever owns it, as anyone downloading ilegal stuff on their wireless will leave a trail back to the owners of the router. (Not that I would do anything ileagal of course)

Of course I do not know how long this will be available. I will be back in Newcastle on Monday afternoon.

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Yes, I took my laptop with me to visit my parents and found that I could get online via some wireless network broadcasting from across the street, though the far corner of the living room was the only place where I could get a decent signal.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Thats is a common phenomenon.
Only recent produced routers come with the security option turned on.
Old routers came unsecured...
I have a lot of points in my neighborhood, where I could steal some minutes...

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"Who does not know anything, must believe everything."
Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach 1830-1916