Need a new wireless router for wireless Internet

[bjzielinski]

Currently I have a Netgear MR814 (v1) wireless access point / router to connect to my wireless internet connection. I have an antenna on my house that picks up a signal from several miles away and drops it down to a coax. The coax connects to what looks exactly like a cable modem. That part is not the issue here. What happens is that the wireless connection (from tower to my house) will drop out occasionally, usually once or twice a week depending on weather, interference, etc. , but usually for less than one second. This causes my router to lose connection, and me having to manually reconfigure the router to locate the DHCP through the cable modem, etc., it will not auto-detect the line. When I hook the cable modem directly to my PC via cat5, WinXP will reconfigure the connection and all will be working again after a disconnect.
To make a long story short (too late I know), I am looking to upgrade this to a 802.11g router/AP that will not have this problem. Anybody experience issues such as this, or know of a rock-solid router that will auto-detect the connection upon disconnection? I realize I will have to upgrade the card on the laptop as well, but this is not an issue.

Bill Zielinski
County of Midland, Michigan

 

[Nelviticus]

I'm surprised that your router doesn't already do this. Does it have the latest firmware?

Correct me if I'm wrong: as far as the router is concerned, it's hooked up to a device which is connected to the internet, right? In my case my router's connected to a cable modem, in your case it's connected to a modem that receives internet over radio, right?

My cable modem occasionally drops its connection due to faults at my ISP and as I understand it, your "radio modem" does the same thing. Drop-outs are certainly things that even the best internet connection will suffer from, so even the cheapest AP or router should be able to handle them.

It sounds as if either your AP is faulty or your "modem" doesn't behave in a 100% conventional way, so that XP can re-start the connection when it's directly attached to the modem but your AP can't.

Is there any way that you can borrow someone else's AP, artificially disrupt the radio signal, and see whether it can re-establish the connection automatically? You shouldn't need to replace the wireless card on your PC unless it's 802.11g and the AP is 802.11b - most wireless devices are interoperable.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[Frank4d]

If one of your PCs is hard wired to the router I may be able to offer a solution. A utlity named "Gearminder"

http://www.edcheung.com/automa/gm.htm

is configured to ping an IP address or domain at set intervals. If four consecutive attempts fail, it establishes a Telnet connection to the router and resets it.

The utility was originally written for RT314 wired routers but works with some other Netgear routers. I have been using if for a couple of years.

 

[bjzielinski]

Thanks for your reply. The Gearminder software probably would work great for my situation, however, the router does not have telnet access.
I think my best bet is probably to just replace this router. Any ideas on what is reliable and cost effective? I don't need many fancy features, just NAT'ing and wireless. I will probably consider replacing the card in the laptop to match.

Bill Zielinski
County of Midland, Michigan