Router DCing and Reconnecting

Yeah it's still happening a lot, and you can not comprehend how annoying this gets after a while.

Hm, I'm having what I think is a similar problem, too. I keep pinging out from IRC after 2 minutes or so (but only after I try to type something).

I've had this problem before.

From experience and what I've heard and stuff, problems like this can be a real pain to pinpoint. Several possibilities include...

1) Your router is pineappled. To eliminate/ confirm this, ask to borrow a router from a friend or test yours at their house.
- Also, check how the router behaves when this happens. What lights turn out? Just the networking lights? Or is it losing power?
2) Your ISP sucks. Or they have changed something recently. Try phoning them.
3) Problems elsewhere in the wiring between you and ISP. (Maybe not as likely in the US as in NZ)

It is the most pineappling annoying thing to deal with I know

D-Link routers are also a real pain to configure due to the poor documentation and interface. Cisco is a lot better.

Rick gave me a poke on MSN saying you're having trouble, so yeah. Good luck Harry

Linksys/Cisco are much better. Buffalo Networks are good too, but a bit pricy.

I'm thinking the router could be dying as well.

I bought the router brand new four days ago. I spent too much money on textbooks. I can't afford another router. Cisco routers are Linksys and they cost over 100 dollars. Mine cost 50 and gave the same range.

I bought the router brand new four days ago.

Then you should be able to return it for a non-defective one.
The router itself has been the only consistent source of error you've described, since you were able to use other connectivity fine and have experienced this dropping on both wired and wireless on this specific router.

I finally figured out the reason I DC.

According to this archived thread, the router just doesn't enough power so it reboots when the power falls short. Apparently, downloading the firmware will fix it. However, the firmware is in a binary file that I can't open. Anyways, I was wondering if there's a physical method I can use to pump more electricity into the router itself.

Why would you need to open the firmware? It's meant to be flashed onto the router itself, not run as an application.

I'm computer retarded. I don't know what to do with binary files. How do you "flash" it on the router, and what is flashing?

Think of it as overwriting the router's OS.
Your router should have a GUI built into it to let you point it at the binary file, it'll upload that, go offline, overwrite itself with the image on the binary, boot back up (possibly with defaults restored, possibly with everything saved as it was, varies from maker to maker) and be done.

That makes sense now. But mine is a different model. Just the same brand.

Hypothetically, if I had the exact same model, how would this binary file fix the problem?

By going into the router via it's web gui ( http://192.168.1.1/ or whatever variant it uses) going into the advanced or system section (generally) and choosing firmware upgrade, browsing for the file and clicking upgrade/upload/whatever.

Oh wow. I did not know about this control-panel typed thing.

Under the WIRELESS tab, I see this:

Number of Wireless Clients: 1

MAC Address	IP Address	Mode	Rate	Signal(%
e8:39:df:0d:ab:af	192.168.0.11	802.11n	65M	100

Under the INTERNET SESSIONS tab, I see this:

Local	NAT	Internet	Protocol	State	Dir	Time Out
192.168.0.11:52939	52939	65.200.11.146:80	TCP	SR	OUT	32
192.168.0.11:52569	52569	69.63.180.44:80	TCP	EST	OUT	40
192.168.0.11:52973	52973	69.73.181.125:80	TCP	TW	OUT	52
192.168.0.11:52953	52953	69.73.181.125:80	TCP	TW	OUT	8
192.168.0.11:52967	52967	69.73.181.125:80	TCP	TW	OUT	24
192.168.0.11:52813	52813	66.220.153.15:80	TCP	EST	OUT	15
192.168.0.11:52954	52954	64.79.210.58:80	TCP	EST	OUT	35
192.168.0.11:52938	52938	65.200.11.146:80	TCP	SR	OUT	31

Okay. I spent two hours changing the settings on my router (and often times causing my router to crash), and I have come to the conclusion that I'm totally lost. The only two settings I could change without having my router crash are the WLAN Partition setting, which I changed from disabled to enabled, and the date/time. >:|

While searching through this user-unfriendly userface, the only useful data I found is this:

WAN Statistics

Sent : 22115	Received : 21248
TX Packets Dropped : 0	RX Packets Dropped : 3258
Collisions : 0	Errors : 0

Something is causing the RX Packets to drop. Not quite sure what that means, but I'm assuming that means that 1/7th of the time I'm online, I dc at least once. I don't know how to fix it. I read on some tech forum that lowering the speed of the router will help too, but I couldn't locate this setting.

I'm not sure whether it is or not. Yesterday night when I connected my laptop to my router by using an ethernet cord, it still did the DCing thing. For reference, my laptop doesn't do this on the public wifi, even though the public wifi is really slow.

Anyways, this ping thing doesn't seem to be working. My laptop is still doing this DCing and reconnecting thing.

Doesn't this result mean that the problem is the router or the connection to the ISP?

Try connecting your laptop directly (bypassing the router). Do you still have an intermittent connection? If yes, then the problem is the connection. If no, then the problem is with the router.

Also, WAN refers to the connection between the router and ISP, so those dropped receive packets indicate a problem there.

At this point I've explored through every single option. Probably every single combination of options too. Nothing worked.

Also, this problem seems to be limited to AIM. The only other chat I use is FaceBook, but it doesn't happen on FaceBook.