Internet connection randomly drops out then comes back

pauljohnston,

Did you update the firmware in the Belkin Router?

I use the firewall on each machine and turned off the firewall in my wireless router.

Try doing this to your ethernet connection.

Go to device manager(right click my computer, left click properties, left click hardware, left click device manager). Click on Network and then right click on your ethernet  adapter, left click properties, power management. Uncheck the box, allow computer to turn off this device to save power.

Rick

Thanks for the reply Rick.

Power management of the network adapter was already off.

I am a little reluctant to touch the router (which the Belkin website says is compatible with Vista) because I need my internet connection for my work at home business.

I can back up my router settings, but what happens if the firmware update doesn't work and leaves me without an internet connection?

It doesn't appear that there is any way to "roll back" to the current firmware (is there?)

Did you try the driver from Dells website here.

pauljohnston,

Many wireless routers, name brands not important, sit in a warehouse for a long period of time. The firmware was updated to fix connection problems and other bugs. So now the customer get a wireless router that was in the warehouse with old firmware.

Updating the wireless router with the correct and latest firmware is really not that hard to do. If you have the older version of the firmware, I'm almost sure you can flash the wireless router with the older version but you need the firmware and backup will not do this for you. Backup will only put the current settings that you have.

If you use no security, you can have problems with people stealing your internet. If you add Mac Address filtering, they can find your Mac Address and spoof their machine to have your Mac Address, so when they try to get on, you get disconnectet.

WEP Security has been hacked, so this type of security is out of the picture.

WPA2 Security is the best way to go but not all wireless devices work with WPA2 Security. USB wireless adapters, print servers, wireless printers, just to name a few, will not connect with this type of security.

This is why we  recommend

Broadcast SSID

Use WPA-PSK(TKIP) Security (Personal)

Mixed mode(b and g) (for wireless adapters and print servers)

Channels 1,6 and 11 work better with some of the wireless devices. I use channel 11.

If you need a second opintion, then go and post this HERE and ask them for their opinion. Please make sure to include the information in red before you hit the post button. The people there will give you the information that you need to know.

Rick

PROBLEM SOLVED

I updated BIOS using latest Dell BIOS and updated the network driver using the latest driver from Realtek (which was a later version than the latest Dell version).

This did NOT solve the problem.

During an instance of internet dropout I reran "Diagnose and repair".
Received message as follows:
"There may be a problem with your DNS configuration.
Windows failed to find the well known host "www.microsoft.com" using DNS."

So I Googled DNS problems and came across www.opendns.com.

I added the following DNS server addresses from www.opendns.com via the TCP/IPv4 properties for the Local Area Connection:
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

Ever since I did this the problem has not reoccurred (approx 24 hours).

What does this mean?
Is there a problem with the DNS supplied by the router?
Why does it affect the Vista machine and not the XP Pro laptop?