Wireless: Connection has become laggy/unstable

By Caleo
in Smart Home, Network & Security

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Caleo Global Moderator

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So, some backstory/relevant points:

- This is a Linksys WRT-54G (v2 iirc), loaded with Tomato firmware (had 1.23, upgraded to 1.28 yesterday hoping that'd help; it didn't).

- Did a 'factory' reset of the router to make sure there weren't any bad settings messing with anything.

- This just started happening recently.. I can think of nothing I did that might cause this to happen.

- As far as I can tell, wireless signal isn't the issue. Windows shows 48-54mbps with 4-5 bars all the time (no variance when the lag is noticeable).

- I've tried flipping around the channels, to lesser-crowded ends of the spectrum - same problem.

- I've accessed the router while this lag is apparent - the router pages load slow too so it's not an ISP problem.

What it looks like on a ping monitor when this happens:

ping.png

So, I need suggestions.. what can I do to further diagnose this problem? I'm thinking my router is finally on its way out but I'd like to be sure before I just go buy a new router. Thanks!

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Caleo Global Moderator

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Assume all until I say otherwise in the next few minutes

EDIT: Yes, I set up a ping monitor on my laptop and it's doing it.

I am going to try something though, the one thing that has changed since this started is the fact that I purchased a TV, which has smart-tv/wifi functionality. Going to disable it and see if it still happens.

Grand Master

Detection

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Twas a long shot but I disabled the wifi on my tv and it's still acting up.

EDIT - Didn't see the edit above

Unless someone else has an idea, I can only think of trying a different router and see if the problem is solved

EDIT - Unless your neighbours have some crazy electromagnetic world domination machine that comes online every few minutes :p

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Caleo Global Moderator

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Well, I powered down both my modem and router for a good minute or so, it has yet to act up again. I'll update this post if/when it does (I'm also keeping an eye on ping rates from the computer hardwired to the router to see if it's just wireless or the router in general).

Edit: I have noticed in watching these ping monitors on 3 different computers that when one computer's ping will be steady, an other one can start jittering a bit, and vice versa.

jitter.png

^ While one of the other computers graphs will start jittery then smooth off when another computer gets jittery. This may be completely irrelevant and just a remote server thing (I am pinging google.com from 3 different computers).

In the couple minutes I've been observing this, I haven't seen any of the problematic spikes.

Grand Master

Detection

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Well, I powered down both my modem and router for a good minute or so, it has yet to act up again. I'll update this post if/when it does (I'm also keeping an eye on ping rates from the computer hardwired to the router to see if it's just wireless or the router in general).

With 1.23 firmware you were running, was there a time that this version firmware was fine ?

Maybe try DD-WRT firmware with a full 30/30/30 reset just to make sure it is not a bug in the firmware

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Caleo Global Moderator

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With 1.23 firmware you were running, was there a time that this version firmware was fine ?

Maybe try DD-WRT firmware with a full 30/30/30 reset just to make sure it is not a bug in the firmware

Yeah, it was fine for a long time. My ping has yet to go haywire again since I powered off the modem/router for like a minute earlier

Grand Master

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Yeah, it was fine for a long time. My ping has yet to go haywire again since I powered off the modem/router for like a minute earlier

How long have you had the problem for ?

I'd have thought if it was just needing a power cycle, that the firmware upgrade would have sorted that.

Unless it was the modem doing something weird and messing with the router, I've had to power cycle the modem this end too when a router power cycle did nothing, but that was just slow net speeds not wireless problems

Fingers crossed :)

Grand Master

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Seems like it's really only been a few days.. though I'm not 100% sure

If it starts acting up again, personally, first I'd probably try dd-wrt / open-wrt to rule out the firmware, if it continued I'd try a new router to rule that out, if it continued after that, walk around with an EMF meter to find out where the interference is coming from

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