Wireless knocking itself out..

Hey,

This is a problem we've been having for a few years now at my parent's house, but I'm finally ****** off with it enough to work out how to fix it! Unfortunatley I don't have the knowledge myself...

We have UK Virgin Media Internet at about 10mbps (not too bad!) and have a Virgin media Modem.

This is then plugged into a Netgear 108mbps wireless firewall router (WGT624v3).

All works fine, unless someone on the network (we have 3 laptops) opens a page with multiple pictures in - say a how-to thread with 10 pictures in, or a 'post your setup' thread with 20 pictures in from different sources etc. You get the idea!

The wireless stops working at this point. No-one can use the internet anymore until the netgear is switched off at the mains and turned back on. Even a 2 second flick off and on will reset it.

The problem occurs on both PC and Mac, and on any web browser.

I have a feeling it's the netgear, with some extreme firewall protection mode on, but I don't really know tbh.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Jonik

Righto...

test #1, plug ethernet cable into mac rather than 'dead' pc. Internet works perfectly. No drop outs when viewing 4+ large picture thread pages at once, and downloading 3+ podcasts at once through itunes.

That would indicate the wireless is the problem right? As it works fine when using the cable.

Plan of action?

I found this in the documentation for your router

Is WPA/WPA2 Perfect?
WPA/WPA2 is not without its vulnerabilities. Specifically, it is susceptible to denial of service (DoS) attacks. If the access point receives two data packets that fail the message integrity code (MIC) within 60 seconds of each other, then the network is under an active attack, and as a result, the access point employs counter measures, which include disassociating each station using the access point. This prevents an attacker from gleaning information about the encryption key and alerts administrators, but it also causes users to lose network connectivity for 60 seconds. More than anything else, this may just prove that no single security tactic is completely invulnerable. WPA/WPA2 is a definite step forward in WLAN security over WEP and has to be thought of as a single part of an end-to-end network security strategy.

Click to expand...

Also the manual seems to suggest not to have a mix of different encryptions. Are all your laptops running the same encryption? I recommend wpa2 if the laptops all can do it.

You may want to look into packet sniffing to see what is actually going on with your network. That is quite a long discussion though and you need proper hardware to do it.

Thanks very much for the help! A reset, and firmware upgrade did the trick *touch wood*!!

Thanks again