WNDA3100, Native Wifi, UPC Issue

Jak

Hi there,

I'm having major problems with a wireless network at home which amounts to the connection to devices being killed off after a little while. I can reset a bunch of things that enable me to get connected again, but so far it seems to just keep coming back as an issue. I should also say that I have seen the UPC router sticky (tech/broadband) and read through it, however, whilst my issue below involves the router, I don't think that it is the source of the problem. Also I have never noticed any speed problems with the connection, beyond occasionally ‘robot voice syndrome’ over Skype that was somewhat annoying. Anyway, posting what I know here is a bit of a long shot, but maybe someone will see something that could help me find another angle to solve it.

So the setup and all devices that might connect are as follows:
• UPC 30mb broadband with the standard Cisco 2425 router
• Desktop PC on Vista business
• 2 Laptops on Vista
• Blackberry with Wifi
• Archos 5 with Wifi

Now as far as I can recall the problems started when I moved the Desktop PC and it couldn’t get a good wireless connection from its new location. To resolve this I went and bought a belkin USB cable extender and a Netgear Wireless N Dual Band usb adapter (WND3100). This allowed me to get a very strong signal. Great.

Now my own perceived culprit for this problem is the Smart Wizard that installed with the WND3100. It scans for connections, can do WPS auto connection and so on. In this smart wizard I selected my connection and gave it the password. As I recall it worked well at the start.

Now however, I notice that Native WIFI default comes up beside my UPC connection in wireless networks and often the UPC connection later disappears. What’s more is that the connection would drop all my devices off and any attempt to reconnect would be met with …
Blackberry – Failed to authenticate against server
Archos – Failed to connect
PC – Settings saved on this computer do not match requirements of network
Also the PC tells me sometimes when I try to reconnect that the password is incorrect or the computer cannot connect the network. Despite the network still broadcasting and the password definitely being correct.

Once the connection goes like this and all devices are offline. I have found that if I turn off everything, hard reset the modem (pin hole for 10+ seconds) then things seem to work. So for example the Blackberry will connect and the Laptop will connect. However, if I turn on the PC with the WND3100 and the Native Wifi thing starts etc. then the problems resume. I might get the PC connected for a while, but then after some time it will drop and everything else will drop.

Today as a test I reset everything but disconnected the PC and WND3100. So I just left the laptop on to see if that would hold the connection all day where I don’t introduce the PC and WND3100. As of right now it is still connected and stable. Which makes me feel the WND3100 with smart wizard etc. are the issue.

Now I have of course made it more complicated to find a solution as I went messing with the Cisco router menu. When I get a connection on the PC I can log in to the router and from there I know that I changed a few things after reading bits and pieces on boards. I remember changing the following:
• Selected 11 as the channel
• Enabled WPA2 security
• Enabled WPS
I also may have changed the password, but it seems I can log in and view the menus without it so maybe not. Perhaps that got reset after the countless times I used the full reset on the back of the modem (the pin hole for 10+ seconds). Anyway, it seems now that any time I log back into router menus and go to change something the connection drops for all devices and I cannot get back on without a full reset of the modem.

I also note that despite the router being set to channel 11, it seems to be picked up as 1 or 6 sometimes when I scan it using either the Smart Wizard on InSSIDer.

So in conclusion of this rambling problem, I believe the issue is either I have messed up setting with the router, the WNDA3100 is changing my connection/security or some element of both.

Any thoughts on things to try to get it all stable again would be much appreciated.

JAK.

dub45

As you know from reading the main thread many people are experiencing problems attempting to use a seperate router with the Cisco unit.

However you do not seem to have made any effort to turn off the routing function when you added the Netgear - can you confirm that you have not done this?

Jak

Hi Dub45,

Thanks for the reply. I'm not actually sure that this would apply in this case - as far as I understood the Netgear WND3100 is just a usb wireless adapter, so I thought its role was simply to catch the connection for my pc in its new location. But I am willing to try anything to fix this. How/where is this disabled?

One thing I noticed over the weekend now is that I can generally get the network to connect now by simply switching off the UPC router, turning it back on and then allowing the netgear's smart wizard on the PC to connect. Other devices can also then connect.

The rather strange issue is that whenever the PC is turned off then, all other devices have their connection dropped and whilst they all can see the UPC network broadcasting, any attempt to connect gets 'Failed to authenticate' or the equivalent message for the device.

Throughout all of this the UPC network is broadcasting, however, at times it seems the devices can't connect. I was reading about the WPS setup, and this seems to have been a likely cause, as my understanding is that it bypasses the passwords to use an alternate key to connect. So if only my PC was trying to use WPS then this could have caused a problem for the other devices.

However, I have disabled WPS in the Cisco router menu now - and reinstalled the Netgear software, so not sure this is the cause.

Again, any suggestions are very welcome.

JAK

dub45

Apologies I misread your post completely and was reading as if you had added a net gear wireless router :eek: the serial no is very close to the one i use.

As you probably realize from the sticky there seems to be a serious problem with the Cisco holding settings.

I think its a good idea to disable the wps. I have never used it when setting up a wireless network. Ideally it should only be a matter of setting up the name and password in the wireless router and the various devices should then see it and be able to connect.