Why Is WiFi Less Stable Year by Year?

[Jason Dunn]

I swear that WiFi overall as a technology is less and less stable every year. Back when it was only 802.11b, I don't remember having nearly as many problems as I have lately. I've owned D-Link, Belkin, Netgear and Linksys routers - all have been replaced in my hunt for a fast, stable router that works with all of my equipment. The past month or so has been particularly hair-pulling; I've been in wireless router hell.<br /><br />A couple of weeks ago my still-quite-new D-Link 802.11n router (a DIR-655) flaked out on me. I spent an hour thinking it was my cable modem, eventually narrowed it down to the router, then wasted an hour on the phone jumping through D-Link tech support hoops just so I could get an RMA and get the router exchanged. It took talking to three techs before they'd admit there was a hardware problem with the router. From the beginning the router had compatibility problems with my wife's iPAQ 1950, even with the latest firmware on both devices. It's embarrassing in a geeky way when my wife has to Exchange sync over WiFi at work because the home network is never functioning. I bought the iPAQ 1950 to replace the previous iPAQ that had trouble connecting over WiFi, hoping that the newer model would be more compatible with modern WiFi. It's not. I don't believe the compatibility problems are due to a hardware failure - I think the DIR-655 just has poor compatibility with WiFi devices, which is a common issue I've seen with routers over the past two years.<br /><!><br />I then switched to my backup router, also a D-Link (DI-624). It kept dropping my connections, both wired and wireless, so I swore I'd never buy another D-Link router. I went out and bought a Belkin 802.11n router, another brand I've had trouble with in the past and never wanted to buy again - but there are only so many choices on the market. The Belkin router worked perfectly when I swapped it into place, but now my Fujitsu P7020 laptop running Windows XP refuses to connect to it regardless of which mode I put it in (WPA, WEP, no security, 802.11n/g, or 802.11g). The HTC Touch won't connect to it either - it can't even see the network. The AT&amp;T Tilt locked up the Wireless Manager trying to connect to it, so I reset it. Trying to even remove the wireless network setting locks up the wireless manager on the Tilt. When I did manage to get it to connect to the Belkin router and prompt me for the WPA password, it would try to connect for a few seconds, then come back and show me a list of networks again. My Dell XPS M1330 can connect to the Belkin router if it's in 802.11g/n mode, but not if it's in 802.11g only mode. I'm in wireless hell.<br /><br />The ultimate frustration here is that whenever I can't get wireless working properly and I'm in desperate need of a connection, I always connect to a neighbour's unsecured network called "default" - and almost every device can connect to it (the Tilt can't however). I'm tempted to go knocking on some local doors to see who's router it is, and ask if I can buy it - because clearly whatever old, unsecured hardware they're using is superior to all the modern, expensive routers that I keep buying.<br /><br /><i>Jason Dunn owns and operates <a href="http://www.thoughtsmedia.com">Thoughts Media Inc.</a>, a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. Why can't WiFi work better?</i>

[gotee12]

May I suggest DD-WRT (http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv2/ddwrt.php)? It's an open source firmware for many popular brands of home wireless. I use DD-WRT at work on old Linksys Wireless router's. It makes for an extremely stable and feature rich router. As long as your hardware is physically ok, it should work like a charm. Enjoy...

Thomas T.
gotee12 at gmail dot com[/url]

[rob_ocelot]

I think part of the problem is interference. There are only so many 'channels' for WiFi and it seems that everyone has a router now and I'd estimate for every router that's broadcasting it's SSID there are at least twice as many that are hidden (though detectable). Add to that the amount of noise in the 2.4 Ghz band from WiFi, Bluetooth, microwave ovens (especially older ones that might not be functioning well), and cordless phones and it's a wonder anything can get connected, much less stay connected.

On the other end of things I think the rush to integrate multiple wireless technologies on one chip is affecting their performance, especially when it comes to power saving. HTC in particular seem to be taking a lot ofshortcuts. My 2003 HTC-built HP iPAQ 4150 can pick up my access point over half a km away -- my 2007 HTC TyTn on the other hand has trouble connecting through one wall. If I hold the Tytn a certain way my WiFi performance improves. It is scary to think that the E-M field around my body is stronger than the 'mighty' Tytn. :oops:

As for stable, flexible routers, the Linksys WRT-54G (espeically in it's 54GL version) is topps in my book. The ability to load custom firmwares is invaluable when the current manufactuers firmware is inadequite or buggy.

[JonnoB]

The problem is that while there are wireless standards group, there is no standard interoperability testing consortium. Nothing that says - this device has been certified by (fill in the blank).

In addition, there are regular technical advances that add speed, range, or some other so-called benefit to the consumer. These advanced come in three primary forms. Pre-final standards such as what had happened with the 802.11n standard (pre-N), official standards as they are finalized, and then proprietary enhancements (anyone remember the 108 wireless-G claims?).

All of these frequent updates makes interoperability testing very difficult and the frustrations that you and many others face is the result. I am sure if you speak to a manufacturer, they will tell you that they have tested the most popular hardware... but my experience is that often their own hardware is suspect to work reliably with each other.

I see no let up as we get additional wireless capabilities with greater range, better power management and better speed. After all, isn't faster and further better? The manufacturers would tell you yes, but our experience often says 'no'.

[dwoloschuk]

Yeah, I experienced similar issues.

I put a wireless router (D-Link) in my mothers house for easy acccess for my Pocket PC (then an Ipaq 5555) and Xbox live play.

All was fine.

Then my Ipaq died (I still miss it :cry: ) and I picked up an Axim x51v.

Then the troubles began.

No wifi connection with the PDA would last without a steady data stream. I tried to monkey around with the settings but finally got so fed up I went and got a Linksys WRT54g router. All is well again.

I'm sure I persevered longer I could have made it work, but I just gave in. It was just easier to scrap the old router. Sigh. I just want things to work as they are supposed to. Is that too much to ask? :roll:

[rzanology]

i thouht it was just me. i bought the new linkys N...the 150 wrtn. This thing disconnects everything as it pleases with out warning. before that i had a dlink that did the same. and before that was a belkin...its really frustrating. But whats funny is neither of these routers had issues with hard wired connections..it was only wireless. and no matter how long you sit on the phone with support...they swear up and down the hardware is fine. it really erks me!!

[x51vuser]

there are lot of 'worms' in the net which occasionally cause problems for routers. Notice WAN light on your router. I remember some 2 years ago that light was steady when I did not use my PC or PDA. Nowdays it constantly blinks and every router eventually slows or fails on some bad packet.

[emuelle1]

I have a Belkin Wireless G Plus MIMO that I bought last year. It works solidly for me. Of all the devices in my house, the only one that has a problem is my wife's Averatec laptop, which works fine when I tell her to "let me take a look at it".

Occasionally when we take a power hit, I have to unplug both the router and the cable modem to get back online, but for the most part my setup works very reliably.

[nmcclana]

I second the DD-WRT router firmware. You can flash it on several different routers - I flashed the WRT54G, which I picked up for less than $40. I get significantly better speeds than with the default firmware, much better coverage, greater stability (router has NEVER crashed), and more functionality.

Another trick, which someone else mentioned, was interference. For most routers, the default channel is 6, so you'll get better connectivity by switching channels.

Also, too, remember that a lot of the routers are fairly significant pieces of hardware (the wrt54g runs something like 300Mhz). Covering your router with dirty socks will not prolong its life span.

DD-WRT FTW!

[vbguru613]

Was the d-Link Revision A or C?

[lanwarrior]

PC-wise, I found out that the wireless card itself can be the cause of disconnect. The Intel 2200BG Wi-Fi card is notoriously incompatible with many routers, especially LInksys's.

[Jorj Bauer]

Many of the points in this thread are really good. But there's one that everyone missed: 802.11n is currently DRAFT hardware. It is not final. It is not guaranteed in any way to be interoperable with any other 802.11n (or b, or g) hardware. There are currently two different drafts to which these have been coded (draft 1 and draft 2), and some fixes have been applied to both by various vendors.

If you by anything labelled "802.11n" today, you're rolling the dice.

-- Jorj

[unxmully]

Many of the points in this thread are really good. But there's one that everyone missed:

And is the other one variants of Windows - XP, Vista and the various Windows Mobile versions?

In my house we have four different OSs - OSX, XP, Windows Mobile and Maemo and I've used a range of NetGear hubs and a BT Home Hub.

OSX and Maemo are as solid as a rock. Never drop a connection and always connect within 5 seconds. Good range as well.

Mobile is so-so on connectivity, not brilliant but no too bad. Slow to connect and some dropouts.

But XP is garbage. Dropouts, failures to connect, the infamous 100% signal but no connectivity problem, 3 or 4 hours sulks when it won't connect at all. And all the time my iBook/MacBook running Jaguar to Leopard have never had a problem connecting.

So while there are some cases where compatibility issues cause problems, and I suspect the n standard's a good example, IMO a lot of it's down to Microsoft's inability to get wireless networking working consistently.

[Mountain343]

I guess I am in the fortunate camp. I've been using SMC routers, wired and wireless, since I first started home networking and I've never had any problems. I absolutely swear by their gear especially since it's one of the few that can handle multiple external stic IPs.

Mac computers, mac laptops, PC desktops and lappies, 5 different PDAs and my wifi enabled camera work great with it without any hiccups.

Hmmm... off to check out that open source firmware. I can never resist tinkering.

[JPD6825]

Incredible, but I conclude that the router manufacturers have passed off a lot of crap hardware to the public.

My experience sounds very similar. First a Belkin (probably just B) with lousy performance - I couldn't get a connection to my Axim when I was upstairs and the router downstairs.

Then a Linksys - and in spite of their good reputation at the time, I got one of their poor performers. Couldn't guarantee a connection to a PC 15 feet away from the thing!

Then D-Link. Not much better.

Then I took a little gamble on a CompUSA branded b/g router that was on sale as a huge loss leader there. $3 after rebate - and FINALLY, believe it or not - I had stumbled upon a router that actually works! It has now probably been 2 years - and I have no complaints - and can connect from anywhere in my house.

Whew!

[peter_f]

I have a Netgear DG834GT running firmware 1.02.04 and all was working fine. A coule of months ago, Netgear posted a firmware upgrade (1.02.09) so I upgraded. Since then, my ipaq4700 would not connect using WPA-PSK. I sent an email to Negear's tech support and they told me to use WPA2 (yeah right!). In the end, they suggested either just using WEP (which worked) or go back to the old firmware (which I have done) as "this issue is due to the timers that are being used on both the router and the PDA being set different".

[Deslock]

I switched from various crappy Netgear and Linksys routers to a low-end Buffalo router with a chipset that supports the various open Linux firmwares. I went with Tomato because it's a little leaner than DD-WRT.

I'm using one at home and another at my office where there's routinely 10-20 clients connected concurrently using WPA. They're constantly transferring lots of huge files, streaming video, etc. It's rock solid. Under this workload I constantly had to reset the previous routers (and at home even with light use they'd bomb every week or two).

Since moving to Tomato six months ago, I've never reset my Buffalo at home and I've reset the Buffalo at work *once*.

The Buffalo routers each cost $25. With this firmware, they perform like (and have the features of) routers that cost hundreds of dollars.

Additionally, it's worth mentioning that XP and WM clients tend to be a lot more troublesome than OSX, Palm, and Linux. Well.... owners of the Linux laptops with g wifi chips often have to go through hoops (NDIS wrapper) to get things working, but once they do they're fine.

However, even with Tomato running, I occasionally run into Windows users who at some random times can't get online until they ether reset their laptops/PDAs or "repair" their wireless connections (I also had occasional issues with my WM devices connecting). It doesn't happen often (that I'm aware of), but we're talking about a fair number of devices: dozens of Windows laptops, dozens of OSX laptops, 1/2 dozen iPhones, a few WM devices, a couple Palm devices. So even though my story is somewhat anecdotal, it's a large and diverse enough sample of devices that I doubt it's coincidental that only Windows and WM devices ever have problems (maybe Windows' WPA support is a little flakey?)

[Deslock]

Incredible, but I conclude that the router manufacturers have passed off a lot of crap hardware to the public.
The general consensus is that it's usually the firmware that sucks.

[Tracy Daubenspeck]

I had nothing but trouble with dlink hardware for several years. I switched to a Belkin 7230 several years ago and have 0 complaints. We use WM devices, an N800, and multiple laptops from different manufacturers with no problems. I think a lot of the issues are firmware on the routers and drivers on the PCs.

[Jon Westfall]

The worst re-occuring router problem I've have in the past (On multiple routers) is the phantom dying DHCP server. I suspect this is probably the root of 99% of my router problems - my cards and devices can associate just fine, but the router's internal DHCP server just won't respond to queries for an IP address. Rebooting the router generally works (So much so that I've seriously considered putting the router on a timer similar to those you put your lamps on when you leave for a few days) to auto reboot every night! It's especially bad at work where every router we've put in has had the problem. I've varied channels, etc... but the only way I can get the router to work for more than a week continuously is to disable internal DHCP and turn it into an access point.

And FWIW, it's threads like this that make me stick with old routers. Atleast when they don't work, I'm not too annoyed as I'm only out $40 or so.

[Sagitario]

I loved my small, light, linksys WRT54GC router ever since I laid eyes on it, but the love song didn't last much.

I don't know if everybody has this problem, but my experience almost every linksys router I've used is that the internet connection at some point freezes. You stop receiving data at some point everytime you connect. I then have to go into the router's settings web page and refresh the IP's so that it can renew the connection. At first I thought it was the cable modem and then my laptop or my phone, but all of these work well with other router brands.

I used it for two months and once I got an unlimited data plan from my phone provider, I simply canned it.

[Eriq Cook]

I've had to replace 4 linksys WRT54G routers at my house over 3 years (I'm not counting my customers). They seem to have a 1 to 1/2 year life span before crapping out.

I just replaced my 4th linksys router 2 days ago as a matter of fact. I was surfing the web and all of a sudden my Internet went out. After 30 minutes of troubleshooting (it took shorter this time because I've been through it before) I narrowed it down to the router once again and replaced with a spare (brand new version 8) WRT54G.

Don't even think about the Linksys Wireless G with Speedbooster technology. Those are the flakiest wireless routers I've used to date.

[intothevoid]

I just recently bought the Buffalo Nfiniti Router WZR2-300N and it works really great. I bought this in place of my Linksys WTR54G v8 which i bought a little over a month ago but it kept going down. With the Linksys my wifi kept going down and i had to power cycle it almost everyday and sometimes if my laptop and my wifes were both on it was dying more frequently. The Buffalo has been really great except My Tmobile Wing is unable to connect to it no matter what I have tried: no security, wep, wpa and it doesn't connect at all. It sees the router but when i try to connect it goes into unavailable and i have to reset the phone to see more access points. The buffalo router had great reviews and does work great. I have 2 laptops and nintendo wii over wifi. And i have my desktop, slingbox, vonage router and the linksys wifi router hard wired.
The linksys was compatible with my phone so I hooked it back up to the buffalo for now. I contacted buffalo about this but they couldn't figure out what the problem was and told me to call HTC or tmobile or microsoft. I also noticed other people having this problem with Kaiser's on xda developers. This is really sad. I think i am gonna return this and try to get the new buffalo router with the dd wrt firmware built in and it doesn't support QOS which sucks.

[laner]

It seems like the quality of the drivers for the wireless cards going into laptops has gone down the drain. We've had real issues with the wifi cards Dell is selling in the D620 &amp; D630s. It doesn't matter if it's the Intel or the Broadcomm based ones they both have issues. It seems like they don't have any tolerance to much latency. We never had this with the older generation of cards that went into the D600 &amp; D610 laptops. I'm mainly connecting with Aruba and Jumiper gear. I've recently changed to an Atheros based card, the GigaByte GN-WI01GT and it's made a world of difference. It is connecting quicker, doesn't drop, and better signal strength. There are rooms in my house that the stock cards wouldn't connect in to save my sole, now it's no problem.

[Russ Smith]

It would be nice to have some real numbers to work with. I can believe that the "need" to drive prices downward (competition) has resulted in less quality control over time. It almost always does. While I haven't experienced the issues some of you have, I don't discount them either. I have a DLink DIR-655 myself and it's been rock-solid since I got it. (I love being able to transfer files at GigaBit speeds :)) I tend to keep up on the firmware releases so that may help a bit. We've got a Hackintosh and a Vista box wire-connected and a Lenovo laptop, hx4700, and Palm T/X connecting wirelessly, all without issues. None of the wireless connections support WiFi N even though the router does. That might help a bit. (N is still draft as someone pointed out.)

What is weird is range. The hx4700 gets a connection three houses away (about 300 feet). The Lenovo and Palm only work within the house. Go figure.

As an aside, I also have a Linksys WRT54GC (Compact G router) that I take along on trips. It's never failed me either, but it's hardly in constant use.

[Shredder11]

I had nothing but trouble with dlink hardware for several years. I switched to a Belkin 7230 several years ago and have 0 complaints. We use WM devices, an N800, and multiple laptops from different manufacturers with no problems. I think a lot of the issues are firmware on the routers and drivers on the PCs.

I've only owned one router since May 2005 and that is the Belkiin F5D7230uk4 which I assume is the same model as yours. Suffice to say my experience has been a really good one. Rock solid day in..day out and is on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I have a Synology DS-101j NAS Server connected to it, along with two wired desktop PCs, a Mio 168 Pocket PC WM2003 with a Sandisk WiFi+256MB SDIO card. My sister connects her Acer Aspire laptop quickly and easily with no problems too.

So you would think that my next choice of router would be simple? If only it was! Every Belkin I have looked into on the net has had endless comments from users with problems, usually unsolved and quite often related to ADSL models. The same can be said of most other brands, except for.....Draytek. They cost a lot more than your average router but so far I have not seen, read or experienced any problems with them. They are more highly specified and work in environments where reliability and compatibility really matter, i.e. business and servers etc.

So although my experience of routers is fair to average, I can say with confidence that my next purchase will quite likely be a Draytek model.