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Have a Netgear dg834g router that's been on permanently for the last >3+ years. It's in my shed office at bottom of garden, 60 ft away from the house. Has been v reliable.
Last few days though, the wireless connection in the house to 2 laptops has been poor, and often dropping connection. In addition, IE has been v slow over last couple of days. Have just upgraded to IE7 to see if that helps.
Up until now, it's all been great but frustrating now. So do routers wear out? Any reasons why it's dropping / lacking wireless distance strength / slow IE? Do I just replace th router, and if so, with what?
Many thanks (and I'm a PC numpty so simple stuff would be great!)
no, not really. Have you tried rebooting it?
This most likely cause is a neighbour has got their own wireless and you're experiencing some interference. Reboot first, if the router is smart enough it will try and find some free channels. See if that helps.
Alternatively you can bigger aerials from ebay, see if one of those helps.
+1 for reboot, these things should last for ages. also check wired connection to remove wireless issue from the equation - it might be slow broadband thats the issue.
as it happens, I have the same router and think mine is on the way out, too.
For some reason, it started randomly refusing to give IP address to my old Mac laptop. I thought it might be the laptop but the same thing now happens with the new one. Time to start saving for a new one I think...
I have that router - have you tried changing the wireless channel as mentioned above?
If you don't know http://192.168.0.1 in the router to get to the setup page
I also had a problem a while ago with mine which was solved by updating the firmware for the router. MIght be worth checking if you have the latest version.
Could other routers in the vicinity interfering with the wireless, could be someones baby monitor, all sorts.
Log in to the router and try a different wireless channel (you should have 11 to choose from)
Is it cold or damp in the shed office? Could be condensation on the pcb. If it is you could try warming it up.
Circuits and chips will deteriorate eventually. Timescales can vary though. Performance of some components declines rather than just stopping too. Apart from that, no idea, what you can try.
I have had a DG834 for about 5 years and no problems whatsoever apart from the normal 3 monthly reboot.
I would be surprised if the router was on the way out but would firstly upgrade the firmware and manually select other wireless channels.
Lastly, you could contact Netgear as they provide excellent support.
thanks all. Have done a firmware update (first ever) and reboot (first again) so fingers crossed
Don't know - mine seem to lose the will to live after about 18 - 24 months! Absolutely no idea why, but I suspect that it may have been the frequency of moving house of late that has done for them!
I have a spare netgear wireless router, with a bigger antenna for it too, I can check the model later. If anyone's interested in it, send me an email at iain.wallace AT gmail.com, say £10 plus whatever it costs me to post?
I do suspect that the problem's more likely someone else's network interfering though. But if you want to try a new router, then I'm happy to sell mine on cheap.
IA - yep interested - if you can email me details that'd be great
soutbankaus AT aol DOT com
Cheers
also you could netstumbler to see what channel's your neighbours wifi are using