Netgear WGR614 and disconnects

[Supermercado]

I've got a Netgear WGR614v4 wireless router with two wireless machines connected to it. They both work... internet connectivity, sharing between them, etc. The problem is that probably at least once an hour, my AOL IM disconnects and then immediately reconnects for no apparent reason. This is on both machines (for reference in case it matters, one machine is less than 10 feet from the router and the other is probably 45-50 feet). I've not noticed a disconnect from regular internet browsing but I suppose it could be happening because AIM disconnects and reconnects in under a second most of the time.

I had Netgear's 802.11b router that's almost identical to the 11g model that I currently have and never had any problems like this with it. I upgraded to the latest firmware on Netgear's site earlier and that made no difference at all, which leads me to believe that I've got a setting on both of these computers or somewhere in the router configuration set wrong or something. I don't know a whole lot about networking so I'm not really sure where to start troubleshooting a problem like this. I'd really appreciate any help that anyone could give so I can maybe get this fixed.

 

[Supermercado]

Bump for any help at all.

 

[novon]

I have the exact same problem - I have the latest firmware. It's not cool at all. If you hear of a fix let me know.

 

[Supermercado]

Likewise I have no idea what might be causing this. As far as I can tell, it's just AIM that does it. I don't think I've ever noticed being disconnected from an ftp or from regular browsing. Just AIM. I'd call Netgear but I'm sure they'd just give me the runaround and not help.

 

[Supermercado]

Anyone? Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Gibson486]

what are your security settings?

 

[buckmacuk]

FWIW I see a similar problem using a DG814 - and it's not on AOL! I use MSMessenger and it does much the same - as does listening to radio (BBC here in the UK) which will periodically just dump.

Could it coincide with dynamic address changes? I'm on BT broadband which is a dynamic IP only conncetion and the IP changes all the time.

Cheers, Chris B

 

[Supermercado]

Gibson486: Did you have any specific settings in mind for me to check? Are you talking about WEP, MAC filtering, that sort of thing? If so, none of that is on right now while I try to figure this out. Our house is far back from the street and far from our neighbors, so I'm not really concerned about anyone getting on our network that's not supposed to be.

buckmacuck: Shouldn't be anything with dynamic address changes. I'm using static IPs for all of my machines.

 

[Supermercado]

Hate to bump an old thread like this, but I wanted to update and make note that I turned off wireless and I'm using the wired connection to my laptop and I still get dropped from AIM. Thanks in advance for any help at all.

 

[shill88]

I'm having the same problem. I read over at DSL reports that another model of Wireless router was doing the samething and they fixed it by downgrading firmwares. I'm going to try downgrading as well. I'll report back.


Shawn

 

[SaintTigurius]

Best thing to do is try to change the MTU to 1450
and also try changing your network card speed to 10half duplex, could be your nick cant keep up to the router, i had the same issues with a dlink ..give it a try
and if its wireless , change the channel to 11 ( play around with them) and set the preamble to long preamble on the router.

 

[shill88]

Whatever you do don't download the 3.xx firmware if you own the v4 model I did and now I have a dead router.

Shawn

 

[SaintTigurius]

and NEVER UPGRADE A ROUTER WIRELESSLY...

 

[ncik]

I have a WGR614 v4 and experience the same problem, connected via ethernet cable. Googling suggests changing the MTU, but there is no consensus on what number to use. I'll try 1450 and see how it works.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Hey all, for some odd frickin' reason this has JUSt started happening to me too.
I've had the 5.02 firmware on it since I got it last fall. In the past few days, no laptops would connect wirelessly but my desktop stays connected wired just fine. AIM cuts off fairly frequently lately, altho its not unheard of as a daily event (school network I think).
I noticed that my router has seemed unusually warm the past few days for some odd reason. Board overheating after six months maybe? I've never heard of long term problems with Netgear routers, but....
I'm going to change the router channel as there are a few other routers in the area and try resetting to default.

EDIT My router's MTU is set to 1500 by default. Any benefit to increasing this?

 

[SaintTigurius]

EDIT My router's MTU is set to 1500 by default. Any benefit to increasing this

if you increase ur internet might not work or slow down, cause 1500 is for cable modems, and 1492 is for DSL modems

 

[fbrdphreak]

Actually, I'm on a university LAN right now Super FAST!
But that's good info for the future!

 

[ncik]

Well, I tried setting the MTU to 1450 and 1400, and I still get the disconnection problems in AIM.

I noticed there is a selection under Port Forwarding for AIM. This is normally for when you are running a server, but I wonder if we have to set the exception for AIM anyway? File transfers still seem to work fine without it.

Also, I found the following article as the top hit for "Netgear MTU" on google:
http://kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_files/n100603.asp

I have not changed the MTU of my workstation's NIC, this may be why those fixes haven't worked. For some reason, DrTCP reports my NIC's settings incorrectly, making me reluctant to use it to make changes. I hope this doesn't have anything to do with XP SP2.. !

 

[fbrdphreak]

Finally got tired of the router dropping wireless connections (literally, no laptop could connect, apparently the router timed out; tried with IBM a/b/g & Broadcom 54G), so I exchanged it @ BBY (I had a v4 and got a v5). If you get the right CSR @ BBY, they will let you swap it out for the same thing as long as you bring them the router & power cord. Of course it helps that I used to work at that store

 

[dqniel]

i have the router and have the same problem. aim disconnects randomly then reconnects, and also, websites load quite slowly and sometimes fail to load at all (then i would click refresh and it would load fine). i thought it may be my bandwith but download and upload speeds are great 600KBdown/45KB/up. i tried removing my router and connecting my computer directly to my cable modem and voila...great connection without drops and internet load problems. wonder when there will be an official fix for this...i don't feel like buying yet ANOTHER router. i've already been through 2 linksys and now this.

 

[ncik]

I gave up. {EDIT: No I didn't. See below.}

 

[bheung]

Hi,

I've been testing firmware 5.0_07 for a day or so and the AIM disconnect problems seemed to have gone away. So far so good. It is available here http://kbserver.netgear.com/products/wgr614v4.asp but is listed as version 5.0_04.

 

[PlatinumGold]

i have two of these, a wgr614 and a wgr614v5

both are in the 1.xxx firmware versions.

worth upgrading firmware?

 

[bheung]

PlatinumGold: Are you experiencing the same same problems on the v1 (I assume that is the version that is just wgr614) and v5? I have a v3 router also but it does not experience any problems. I would check the ChangeLog to see if anything has changed that might apply to you. Then again, I like upgrading firmware because I'm obsessive like that. In my case, it fixed my AIM problem.

 

[PlatinumGold]

Originally posted by: bheung
PlatinumGold: Are you experiencing the same same problems on the v1 (I assume that is the version that is just wgr614) and v5? I have a v3 router also but it does not experience any problems. I would check the ChangeLog to see if anything has changed that might apply to you. Then again, I like upgrading firmware because I'm obsessive like that. In my case, it fixed my AIM problem.

i don't use aim, but on my v1 i have cable internet and am running a backup server on it. noticed that it would crap out after a significant download. but the cable modem would be fine. it would be in the router.

mb i should update firmware on that one.

the v5 one, i just set up recently with my DSL connection. haven't used it very long. only about a week.