Wireless

Remember when I mentioned a week ago that my wireless connection kept dropping? Let me tell you; I tried to figure out all week what the problem was. Sometimes I'd be able to connect to mine, which is just across the room from where I sit with my computer. A lot of the time, though, my laptop wasn't detecting it. But it could pick up a couple of other wireless networks in the area. One of them was a secured network like mine, and the other was unsecured. So unless I wired directly into my router, my laptop bounced back and forth between my network and the other, unsecured one. Sometimes it couldn't connect to either one. Talk about frustrating!

Like I said, I tried to figure out all week what the heck was going on. I went in and fiddled with all the router's settings, and still nothing. The hubby found my old Linksys router and wireless access point that I had used in Germany, and I even tried hooking those up to see if I had any more luck there. Well, I found out that the Linksys access point was no good. It would get power, but when I connected it to the router with the network cable, the router wasn't recognizing that the access point was connected. Bummer. Oh well...the hubby's secretary needed a router, so I told him to take the router to her and I threw the access point out. We're trying to get rid of stuff...so there were two more things gone that had been taking up space.

So I reconnected my Belkin again and bridged the connection again since I had changed the DSL modem's settings for the Linksys router. Then I went to the Belkin website to see if I could find a troubleshooting page or something. I did manage to find an FAQ section, and one of the questions was about frequent dropped connections. So I read that one and it suggested changing the channel for the wireless connection. Hmmmm...could it really be something so seemingly simple as that? So I changed the channel my router was working on. Lo and behold - I haven't had any trouble since.

Lesson learned...check the device's website and try the simple things first. It would have saved me a week's worth of frustration.