Network connectivity problems

[Echilon]

I had a Belkin router, with a Realtek NIC. And the router would sometimes lose the connection and become unresponsive, whether or not I was using the connection. The only way to regain the connection was to hard reset the router. I took it back to PC world, and they tested it and told me it was fine and that I had it set to disconnect on inactivity (which is BS, I know what it was set to, and this was certainly not the case). They wouldn't give me a refund for a 'non faulty' product without a reciept, so I had to buy a new one.

I bought a Netgear DG834G, and a Netgear 108mbps USB adaptor to go with it, which is plugged into a main USB port (not a hub) through a shielded cable. I have a loft conversion, and the Netgear router is less than 10 feet away, in direct line of sight, no walls, nothing. It's pluigged in to the primary phone socket in the house, and every so often, the Wireless connection drops. To regain it, I have to replug in the wireless adaptor and sometimes reboot.

Now, at first I could say maybe there were incompatibilities with the hardware I had, but after changing everything, and still having the same problem, I';m starting to wonder. Is there anything that could be causing this? I remember a while ago I had a similar problem. I had a BT modem, which would drop at regular intervals every five minutes. I swapped it with a mate who had an alcatel speedtouch, which he had no problems with. The Speedtouch worked fine on my connection and the BT modem worked fine on his. I eventually though it must have been some sort of compatibility problem and didn't really think about it much. Could it be that these two routers I've tried are more sensitive to noise on the line?

[Echilon]

I think I've managed to narrow this down to the USB Adaptor. After a while (an hour or so) windows stops recognizing it and I lose connectivity, even though the wireless icon still shows excellent signal strength. Even if I unplug the adaptor, windows still shows excellent strength. I've managed to reduce the frequency of disconnects by moving the router back to an extension in my room, using wired ethernet until I can get a cable laid from the main socket to my room. From my experience of WiFi so far, I'm really not impressed :no: