Intermittent internet Intel 2915 ABG

[stuartf]

I have a T43 with the Intel 2915 ABG wireless card. I have a Linksys wrt54G wireless router and I am on a university campus in China and use their network to connect to the world. I am running XP with SP3

My connection is intermittent, I can sometimes go a full day with no problem then the next day I will get bounced off every five minutes. I have had the IT squad from here check things out and they state that my connection to the network is sound. My wife’s X32 and my son’s MacBook are similarly plagued. I did set the router up on my T43, FWIW.

I have downloaded new drivers for the wireless card, new firmware for the router to no avail. I have checked for viruses with nothing showing up. Cabling into the router does not improve the situation. I have bought a different wireless router with no change. I have changed out cables as well. I have taken my T43 elsewhere on campus and found that I had a rock steady connection. This same combination of computer and router worked flawlessly three weeks ago in the US.

It is my assessment that the problem is with the network, perhaps an intermittent signal that sometimes is better, sometimes worse (when it is good, it can be quite good, but sometimes it is so slow that the HTML formatting won’t load on a page and I get plain type). Before I escalate here with the IT staff I want to check to see if there is something I may be missing.

One other symptom… I have noticed that my wireless icon is blinking most of the time, rather than being steadily on.

Thoughts?? Suggestions?? Confirmations of sorts??

Many thanks

[Harryc]

Explain what interface the campus network provides in your quarters and the physical hookup to it from your router. Start from the wall jack. Also, I find it odd that they'd allow you to hook up a router to their network. That is not a normal campus connection policy. Is that standard practice for them? If so, what settings do they recommend for the router? Is it just acting as a passive wireless access point? What happens if you just connect to the same jack using straight Ethernet cable from your Thinkpad? Also, if you are running Vista, check out the links in this thread.

[underclocker]

I've noticed that some of the Intel 2915abg adapters behave this way.

The only way I have improved this is by going into the properties/advanced settings for the adapter and setting transmit power to full and shutting off power save mode.

[stuartf]

The setup here is a network cable coming out of the wall and into my router. The router was set by the IT folks (IP address 192.168.1.101, Subnet 255.255.255.0, Default gateway 192.168.1.1, DHCP server 192.168.1.1, DNS 202.116.62.2)and the use of routers is ubiquitous here, all the offices have them.

Connecting the cable directly from the wall into the T43 does not change anything, I should have mentioned that.

I have made the recommended changes to the Intel cards (both the T43 and the X32, but the MacBook is on holiday so will see what that has when it returns.

Thanks for the assistance. Oh, and I am running XP SP3

stuartf