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Losing Wi-Fi Connection - Why me?! - Jay W (3rd Mar 2012 - 22:15:07) Does anyone know why my laptop refuses to connect to our internet unless I turn the router off and on again (causing children on Ipods and other laptops to whinge at their momentary loss of internet connection at a life-or-death moment in a very important game)? We had a desk top and 2 x laptops connecting quite happily via the router until we installed a wi-fi printer. That will only connect if you allow it to be the first thing to connect, otherwise you have to turn router off and on again. Since connecting son's Ipod in February, my laptop has got the hump and is playing silly devils as well. Any ideas?

Re: Losing Wi-Fi Connection - Why me?! - Editor (3rd Mar 2012 - 23:51:41) Hi It sounds like it could be related to IP addresses conflicting. Your wifi printer needs a fixed IP address, but other devices should be assigned dynamic IPs from your router. However, if you just allow your laptop to hibernate it will remember its 'old' IP address, but your router, in the meantime, could have re-assigned it to an Ipod (for instance). Alternatively, it could just be a faulty wifi card in your laptop. What happens if you use it at a friends house ? Alan

Re: Losing Wi-Fi Connection - Why me?! - Ellis (4th Mar 2012 - 17:24:33) You need to make sure all wireless devices are using "DHCP" including the printer. This will fix it.

Re: Losing Wi-Fi Connection - Why me?! - Richard (4th Mar 2012 - 17:32:08) As the editor mentioned, assign the printer a fixed adddress and then go into the DHCP (May be called address assignment or similar) set a range that doe snot incldue the printer. As an example, if your router has an address of 192.168.0.1, set the printer to 192.168.0.2 and then let the router hand out address from 192.168.0.10 to 192.168.0.20. If you still lose connectivity after that, you will need to use a tool on a laptop to see if the signal is going. Is the router an old one? Can you borrow one to see if that helps? They do fail

Re: Losing Wi-Fi Connection - Why me?! - Jay W (5th Mar 2012 - 10:50:49) Many thanks for the advice. I suspect it is conflicting IP addresses although everything is turned off completely rather than leaving on stand by so would have thought DHCP (in use) would reassign automatically. I will look into assigning fixed IP address for printer - when I have sufficient brain power to translate computer-speak and am feeling calm! I'm sure the set up instructions didn't mention it but I suspect I was so delighted I had connected it, I didn't look further into it. Will also try taking my laptop to my neighbour to see if it will connect there. Yes, router is failry old - provided by Tiscali at least 7 years ago. Had been toying with idea of changing to BT anyway (new router) but not able to face the set up and notifying change of email address (especially where internet sites insist on having as your user name etc). Typical impatient woman juggling too many other tasks!

Re: Losing Wi-Fi Connection - Why me?! - Nick Hancock (5th Mar 2012 - 20:34:37) It's not just you. It's a long running bug in our house and I put it down to just too many pieces of kit trying to connect to one router (a Zoom bought from Disking, so not just your standard TalkTalk freebie, which was even worse). I'm interested to look into this DHCP trick. Where do I find the settings? Is in the network connections controls on my computer or in the router settings?

Re: Losing Wi-Fi Connection - Why me?! - DML (5th Mar 2012 - 23:01:50) A colleague of mine who uses her pc to work from home in another part of the country had ongoing problems until someone suggested the following piece of equipment - she has never looked back apparently : N Technology TP-LINK-TD-W8950ND Wireless Lite N ASDL 2+ modem router

Re: Losing Wi-Fi Connection - Why me?! - Richard (6th Mar 2012 - 20:38:31) Buying a proper router that is up to date will fix many issues. As an example, my ISP (Who for the sake of argument we shall call Plus Net) provide a Thomson router. For my needs about as effective as a chocolate fireguard, so I use a Netgear one instead! If you are trying to do anything at all "clever" with wireless the bigger brans names give you more choices in their options to get the desired result. NB. They also give you more options to make a mess of them!

Re: Losing Wi-Fi Connection - Why me?! - Tags (8th Mar 2012 - 15:51:03) Assigning a static IP address to the printer is always a good idea - you don't want it's address to change. Another good thing to do is to actually plug it into the back of your router with a cable (if you have a LAN port on the back of the printer). The DHCP settings can be found in the admin page of your router (normally accessed via your web browser on http://192.168.1.1 or http://192.168.0.1). Once you've found the DHCP settings you should take the advice of the previous poster above! The trouble with replacing the router provided by BT / TalkTalk / etc is that they are reluctant to support you when things go wrong. I also had issues with my TalkTalk router wireless being unreliable. I had difficulty with devices on my network not talking to each other properly. So I kept the TalkTalk router in place (connected to the internet) but switched off the wireless from the router admin page. I then plugged in my own wireless router in the back and now use that for all my wireless needs. The range is much better and it is rock solid. The router is a linksys and I have loaded on a different operating system. I never have to restart it!

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