I just installed a Wireless-N router and have spent nearly 5 hours on the phone with Cisco trying to diagnose problems. They have pretty much reconfigured everything in the router and we are still having intermittent connection problems. Sometimes everything works great, other times one or both PC's cannot connect to the web. One of the most bizarre is that when I close my laptop (connected wirelessly) my wife cannot connect to the web on her desktop (hardwired via ethernet into the router). This doesn't always happen, but it's happened more than once. I can take only so much talking to people in India who are reading from a script and taking me thru the same steps over and over. Since Vintage is the ultimate knowledge-base, who can help me?

Their latest volley has me turning off my Norton firewall and anti-virus software in both PC's. I'm not really comfortable with that. She tried to tell me the Linksys has built in anti-virus software. Huh?????? I might be okl turning off the Norton firewall but I'm not ok turning off anti-virus. Any help would be appreciated.

 

The Linksys has a built-in firewall, but not anti-virus, as you suspect. What sort of wireless cards are in your laptop and desktop?

This sounds to me like you may simply have a defective unit; my Linksys-N has been fine for over 2 years, through numerous code upgrades.

What does your ISP have to say? I know mine has some decent configuration help and debugging details for routers/wireless routers that they support, and they do support Linksys.

 

If you just got it, I might consider an exchange.
don't rule out flaky hardware and once your out of the exchange window your stuck with it.

 

When the second pc experiences a problem, try to see if it is still associated with the access point.

From that pc try to ping the gateway (router) ip, if you can get there, you know the wireless side is ok and the problem lies with the router/firewall.

In that case, disable the firewall and test again. If the problem clears, you know its the firewall config.

 

You may want to check to see if there's a firmware upgrade for the router. Even though it's new to you it may have been sitting in a warehouse for a while.

Then again it may be a defective unit.

 

Update: I did upgrade the firmware a couple days ago. No help. As of midnight last night they are authorizing a new router to be shipped. I have low confidence this will fix the problem. Also, within minutes of the last support call, I lost the connection again with the Norton firewall turned off.

I did ping websites, the router, etc. while I was on the phone with them and nothing was discovered there.

Dave, not sure what wireless card is in the laptop but it is a relatively new (weeks) HP. The desktop does not have wireless and is connected via ethernet to the router.

 

You may want to connect the cable modem to the desktop directly and leave it there for an hour or so. If the Internet connection stays up then you'll have pretty well pinpointed the router as the problem.

 

Out of curiosity, are you running Norton 2008 or 2009?

 

That config was working fine prior to us getting the wireless. We would just pull the ethernet cable from one or the other computer whenever we wanted to switch them. It always worked fine. Only thing we had to do was cycle the modem off/on.

I had a similar problem in the Ohio house with an older Linksys router. I had it wired to a desktop and we had 3 other laptops in the house. Mine, my sons, and my wifes. Everything worked great until my wife opened up her laptop. Every time that happened it would lock up the network and no one could get on. We had to unplug the router and modem to get back up. And shut off her laptop. Very strange. I have nothing good to say about this company.

 

Not sure Ken. Version is 16.5.0.135