We're having trouble with dropped wireless connections from a laptop. It connects when laptop is booted, and then stays on for an hour or three or six hours, and then is lost. Then in manually reconnecting, one of two things shows up. Sometimes, Network Manager shows "activating", which is usually that it has connected to the router but has not been able to get a network address. This can usually be fixed by going into the Network Manager, and reentering the password (or one character of it). Other times, if one "scans" in network manager, no networks appear. In this case, "rcnetwork restart" will usually restore the connection. So the problem is not that we cannot connect, but that once we connect it is not reliable, and gets dropped at unpredictable intervals, usually but not always once or twice a day.
I'm using knetworkmanager in kde (rather than ifup), but the same behavior has occurred in gnome. If I recall, it has also happened with ifup. Opensuse 11.4, kde 4.6.
Any suggestions as to how to troubleshoot this? Thanks.
On 02/27/2012 06:35 PM, Fr David Ousley wrote:
We're having trouble with dropped wireless connections from a laptop. It connects when laptop is booted, and then stays on for an hour or three or six hours, and then is lost. Then in manually reconnecting, one of two things shows up. Sometimes, Network Manager shows "activating", which is usually that it has connected to the router but has not been able to get a network address. This can usually be fixed by going into the Network Manager, and reentering the password (or one character of it). Other times, if one "scans" in network manager, no networks appear. In this case, "rcnetwork restart" will usually restore the connection. So the problem is not that we cannot connect, but that once we connect it is not reliable, and gets dropped at unpredictable intervals, usually but not always once or twice a day.
I'm using knetworkmanager in kde (rather than ifup), but the same behavior has occurred in gnome. If I recall, it has also happened with ifup. Opensuse 11.4, kde 4.6.
Any suggestions as to how to troubleshoot this? Thanks.
This could be an interference problem. First, if your laptop has a signal strength indicator, watch it and see if the normal complement of signals is being received. Also, look and see *what* is being received--do you see the usual group of neighbors, or are they being swamped out by something.
Borrow another laptop that has wireless, and see if you see a similar problem on it.
Tracking down an interfering signal is beyond the scope of the average computer user, but if you determine that it's likely to be something like that, perhaps a call to the local Amateur Radio Club might find a ham or two who could and would help you find the interferer.
--doug
On Mon, 27 Feb 2012 21:25:09 -0500 Doug dmcgarrett@optonline.net wrote:
On 02/27/2012 06:35 PM, Fr David Ousley wrote:
We're having trouble with dropped wireless connections from a laptop. It connects when laptop is booted, and then stays on for an hour or three or six hours, and then is lost. Then in manually reconnecting, one of two things shows up. Sometimes, Network Manager shows "activating", which is usually that it has connected to the router but has not been able to get a network address. This can usually be fixed by going into the Network Manager, and reentering the password (or one character of it). Other times, if one "scans" in network manager, no networks appear. In this case, "rcnetwork restart" will usually restore the connection. So the problem is not that we cannot connect, but that once we connect it is not reliable, and gets dropped at unpredictable intervals, usually but not always once or twice a day.
I'm using knetworkmanager in kde (rather than ifup), but the same behavior has occurred in gnome. If I recall, it has also happened with ifup. Opensuse 11.4, kde 4.6.
Any suggestions as to how to troubleshoot this? Thanks.
This could be an interference problem. First, if your laptop has a signal strength indicator, watch it and see if the normal complement of signals is being received. Also, look and see *what* is being received--do you see the usual group of neighbors, or are they being swamped out by something.
Borrow another laptop that has wireless, and see if you see a similar problem on it.
Tracking down an interfering signal is beyond the scope of the average computer user, but if you determine that it's likely to be something like that, perhaps a call to the local Amateur Radio Club might find a ham or two who could and would help you find the interferer.
--doug
I would add that a poorly matched / buggy, or wrongly configured module / driver could be failing to scale Tx/Rx power, causing hardware protection circuitry to intervene when the wireless nic starts overheating. I actually saw this in my laptop early on with the iwalign(sic?) module.
Carl
-
Carl Hartung -
Doug -
Fr David Ousley