Router Woes – Wireless Goes to Sleep
June 10, 2008
I currently have a D-Link 524 wireless router. For wired connections the thing works great. For most of my wireless needs it has served me well… as well. I did notice a strange problem from time to time that I never really thought about until I played with running servers over my home network.
The initial wireless connection would establish without problems, but after a period of inactivity the wireless connection would go to sleep. At first I thought it was an issue with my wireless network card, but then I did some Googling and found out differently. It appears that this is a sporadic problem on D-Link units and no solution had been found. That really sucks.
I like the 524 and have everything set up the way I want it, but since my house isn’t network wired I depend a lot on a stable wireless connection. Therefore, I decided to buy a 2Wire 2700HG-B gateway unit. It has a modem built into the wireless router that works with my DSL ISP. From everything I have read, these are great little units. Hopefully this will correct my sleepy wireless connectivity problem. I will give an update when I have the 2700 up and running.
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1.
Derek | June 11, 2008 at 7:24 pm
The first thing you’ll want to do to prevent your wireless connection from dropping is to see if your computer is managing your wireless card’s power. It may be instructed to shut off your wireless connectivity after a certain amount of idle time goes by. If you have system specific utilities, such as Dell’s Quickset, make sure that the wireless power management isn’t set to shut off the card if your computer is idle for a certain period of time. Second you’ll want to check the settings on your wireless card via your device manager. In Windows XP (assuming that’s the operating system you’re using):
* Right-click on “My Computer” and select “Properties”
* Select “Hardware” and click on “Device Manager”
* Find your wireless card under “Network adapters” and double-click it.
* Verify that there aren’t any auto power management settings enabled that might be shutting your card down prematurely.
Update your router firmware and wireless card drivers
If all of the above hasn’t prevented your wireless connection from dropping, you’ll want to update the firmware of your wireless router, and you’ll want to update your wireless card drivers. This should solve the problem most of the time. If it doesn’t, or if the connection still drops on occasion, try adjusting your wireless router settings as follows:
Adjust your wireless router settings
* Lower the MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) from 1500 to 1492 or less (usually found on your router’s main/ basic setup page)
* Adjust the following advanced wireless settings:
– Lower the beacon interval from 100 to 50
– Lower the fragmentation threshold from 2346 to 2306
– Lower the RTS threshold from 2347 to 2304
Voila!
That should solve your wireless connectivity problems and should prevent your wireless connection from dropping.
2.
mojotechblog | June 12, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Hi Derek:
Thanks for posting the great info! While I have tried some of the listed items (firmware/driver updates), I haven’t tinkered with the power or router settings that you suggested. I look forward to giving them a try! I will post my results soon.
3.
Sandy | May 5, 2009 at 12:24 pm
My problem is that a lot of times when I am online I get this message that says repairing network connection and it runs a repair check or whatever it does and says everything is fine but if I am in a chatroom I get shut off from that. Any ideas?