I went from DSL to cable about a month ago. My DSL worked well and I could include my snow bird neighbors on the wireless. This year when they got here, I had changed over to cable, I put one neighbor on the wireless, and he gave out my code to his family, when they left other neighbors came and all together there were nine devices using the internet, mine were my computer, Magic Jack Plus, my laptop, and the new I-pad. My neighbor had his I-Phone, I-Pad, and laptop on. Another neighbor had a laptop and i-phone on for internet use. All told nine devices. Soon my laptop (wireless) computer began dropping off the net, and I would have to go out and reboot the modem and router. Last evening I simply changed the name of my router, and put in a new 16 digit wep key.
My question is would that amount of gear have addressing issues that would give the router a headache? Especially if one or more of the laptops had some kind of malware on it and was sending out bad traffic. All of my computers are relatively clean but those other two laptops are dogs.
Gaming, streaming movies etc. can really suck up the bandwidth quickly. My kids iPOD would knock Netflix down to 4 bars when he would download. I switched to cable because we have so many devices.
Does your router have QoS or bandwidth control so you can automatically or manually prioritize traffic? My Netgear router has and just turning Internet Access QoS on seems to keep the xbox and iPOD from hogging the bandwidth.
I have a netgear router as well, I have all the neighbors locked out, and they ain't gettin back on. When there was no troubles on the old DSL they were welcome to use my wireless but if their use gives me fits they can fend for themselves. I told them all yesterday, everyone is on their own from now on until I can figure this out, but if I have no more troubles, then everyone is locked out. They accepted it easily. We do have free wi fi/hardwire hookups at our community center office so they can schlep their laptops down there and use that.
It's probably the wireless card on your computer going bad... it happens. It's possible it's something else but any modern router can handle at least 100 clients without issues. Slow network connectivity would be a symptom if the network channel was overloaded... but losing your connection is a sign of something else.
By the way, make your network not publicly visible (you can still get to it, but the first time you log on, you will have to add the name manually) and no one will bug you.
charger — Jan 16, 2012It's probably the wireless card on your computer going bad... it happens. It's possible it's something else but any modern router can handle at least 100 clients without issues. Slow network connectivity would be a symptom if the network channel was overloaded... but losing your connection is a sign of something else.
By the way, make your network not publicly visible (you can still get to it, but the first time you log on, you will have to add the name manually) and no one will bug you.
Thanks Charger, I don't have it invisible, but I do have everyone locked out with a 128 bit encrypted WEP key. I just downloaded the manual for the router and after reading up on it. I may make some changes.
So far it is working OK. If it is my network card that is inside this computer, and it is a laptop, and it is doing some strange things on bootup sometimes. Right now I am running it on AC without the battery in it (one is on the way, just shipped this morning) So that may be an issue with it. It is almost 4 years old so I may just have to spring for a new one, or reload the system and go from scratch. I do have the hard drive (OS/Apps Imaged so I may try that if the computer takes a crap on boot up some day.