Tips on router choice / configuration

[AZTriGuy]

Hey everyone, long time reader but first time poster as I want to use the collective wisdom here to help solve my wireless woes. Since moving to Arizona a bit over a year ago, we've had sketchy wireless performance in the house. I've gone through a couple of wireless routers, a Netgear that I can't remember the model of, a Linksys WCG200 (cable-modem/wireless router combo), and now a Netgear WPN824. On all of those devices, there would be times where the connection would drop out and none of the computers could see the router, always resulting in a reboot of the router. Sometimes it goes weeks without occurring, sometimes it happens several times an hour. So forums have chalked that up to the stucco construction out here, or interference from a neighbor. I also do online gaming and occasionally torrent, and the WPN824 seems to choke on those tasks (even with port forwarding enabled).

The other "gotcha" to my environment is that we use AT&T CallVantage VoIP service. This service has a telephone adapter that need to be installed between the cable modem and router to correctly apply the QoS properties to the voice packets. The trick is that the D-Link box does its own NAT, DHCP, and routing, so I ended up having to disable the routing functions on the WPN824 anyway so I wouldn't double-NAT. That actually seemed to help for a while with the wireless connection issues, but last night it reared its ugly head again and kept disconnecting. So, basically, I'm not using any of the routing functions in the WPN824, only the wired switch and wireless access. Kinda seems a waste of hardware in a way...

I'm limited as to where I can put the wireless router, as the cable only comes in two places in the house (one on each side, basically). Right now, it's all set up inside the TV stand (router's actually on top, but modem and TA are tucked away), and there just doesn't seem to be a good place to put the router to minimize potential interference.

Sorry for the long post, but to sum up: My wireless network has never operated reliably, what things might I do to help it? Is there a better way that anyone knows to use the telephone adapter? And finally, is there a router out there that will magically solve all of my problems?

Andy

[classicsoftware]

Make sure there are NO other wireless device in the same frequency as the router. If you have 2.4 ghz cordless phones, that can be a problem.

[AZTriGuy]

We've got so much wireless stuff in this house I'm surprised I haven't started growing a third arm...

We use Uniden cordless phones that operate in the 5.8ghz range, I remember selecting those phones as reviews said they were good for mitigating wifi interference. In our old house we had a cordless phone that would completely take down the network when a call came in. It was fine when we weren't using it to talk on the phone, but the second it picked up - BAM!, there went the network. Hence, the Uniden phones, worked MUCH better.

There are a lot of other things around that one forum or another has said could be causing interference, mainly a big LCD TV (unfortunately located pretty close to the router) and an aquarium with metal-halide lighting. Truthfully, I hadn't noticed a difference either before or after the addition of those items.

The last problem happened Wednesday night, the router kept dropping all the wireless endpoints again and again. We'd reboot it, then after about 5 minutes use it would go out again. When we'd try to scan for networks, we could see our neighbors access points but not ours. Now, it has been up and stable ever since. It can go for weeks staying fine, then all of a sudden we have a day where it drops continuously. Since this has happened consistently over a couple of different routers, sounds like interference to me. I just can't tell what would be so intermittent, driving me nuts. Any ideas for better placement or routers that might not be as prone to interference trouble?

Last thought, any thoughts on the draft-N devices, if those might help? The new AirPort Extreme looks cool, though a little overpriced even for an N device. All of my endpoints are 802.11g right now (three desktops, two laptops, a TiVO, and a Wii), and I could only upgrade a few to N so I'm not sure if I'd see any of the benefits.

Damn, I just reread the post and realized how much of a geek I sound like :D

[classicsoftware]

I would not try the pre-N devices.

If this is the same equipment, we need to determine if the problem is the router or the modem.

Do you have a PC that can be hard wired into the router?

If the Linksys is a router/modem combination, why do you need the DLINK?

have you tried taking the VOIP system off line to see if that is the problem?

[AZTriGuy]

I've changed equipment a couple of times, have the same issues - basically why I'm leaning towards either the router being in a bad place or some other interference that I have not yet been able to identify. Here's what I've got now:

Cable split at wall, one path to TV, one to cable modem
Cable service comes in to D-Link DCM-202 modem
Out from modem into D-Link VoIP Gateway for AT&T CallVantage service, WAN port
Out from VoIP Gateway into Netgear WPN824 wireless router (using LAN port on router to bypass DHCP, routing, and NAT functions as those are provided by VoIP Gateway)


Not using the Linksys combo modem/router anymore, as that didn't play nice with the VoIP gateway. The Gateway wants to be between the modem and the router so it can apply its QoS settings, and there wasn't a way to do that with the combo unit. I had the same wireless problems with that box, though. Anything hard wired into the router wouldn't lose internet connectivity, but anything wirelessly connected would lose its connection and not be able to see the wireless network anymore.

With the sporadic nature of the problem, I haven't been able to determine if the VoIP Gateway is causing any problems. Like I said, it can go weeks without any problems. I have disconnected the gateway in the past when the router locks up, but it doesn't seem to help. I can't keep the gateway unplugged for extended periods, as that's our house phone.

I do have a laptop that I can hard-wire into a port on the router. During the times that the wireless network goes down, internet connections don't seem to be affected on hard-wired devices.