Wasn't sure where to put this. My computer constantly drops my wifi signal and i have to go in and reconnect. Would my router be bad? I am using a Linksys wireless N router and my laptop is a new macbook pro. I have been having problems for a while and have been blaming it on Comcasts crappy service, but I cant help but wonder if my router is bad....


thoughts?


edit: my router is a year or 2 years old (not sure if that matters lol)

 

You may not know this, but while most in the States call it "Wi-fi" like pronouncing both i's as "eye", people in France and Belgium (the French speaking part at least) pronounce it as "Wee-fee".

 

Well age could have something to do with it; also note that while I have been out of the game for a bit Mac's network cards in general have sucked. Routers lifetimes generally aren't very long (Why I don't know, they don't do a whole lot) and 2 years is a while. Do you have a Wireless N card as well, or are you just using onboard?

This is a product of a) your router and b) home wireless networking blowing in general

 

Try changing channels. Try using another device too to see if it also drops a lot.

When all else fails, ask Comcast for a new one.

 

lol that was very helpful, thank you.


the router i am using was not provided to me by comcast. I will go buy one tomorrow and see if that changes anything i guess. I believe my pro is N capable but that shouldnt matter (never had a problem with my 08 macbook.) I kind of assume it is a bad router so I will start there, and if new equipment does not fix it I will just return it haha!



and what do you mean by "changing channels" ?

 

Have you been having the problems prior to getting the Macbook?

Try connecting with RJ45/ Cat5/6 cable to the Comcast box directly to the Macbook, and see what happens.

It also helps if you have another system around to compare it to the Macbook.

My first inclination is, as whiteflash guessed, the Macbook, but mostly because it wants to defer immediately to 802.11g, and if the Linksys is speaking something else, the Macbook has to poke around before it figures it out.

I'm guessing there's some voodoo in making all the defaults agree. After that, I'd guess the age of either the Comcast router or the Linksys.

 

One thing to consider is Wireless N wasn't actually an official speed back then. There was no standards for it, so the early "N" routers were all different and quite buggy as they didn't have a unified standard yet. I sold stuff to businesses and as much money as I could have made selling a *#@# ton of N gear I refused to put businesses in lingo with potentially faulty / un-unified technology.

 

In your router settings webpage:

 

try using something like netstumbler(except netstumbler is for windows only)...I believe Kismet is for Mac OS...it's for wifi networks...it can tell you all the wi-fi networks in the area, how strong the signals are and the channels each SSID(network name) is on...a lot of wireless routers out of the box are by default on channel 6 and most people do not bother to change it...if there are too many SSIDs near by with the same channel, there can be connectivity issues...recommended channels are usually 1,6, and 11

 

.recommended channels are usually 1,6, and 11

Yes.