Why does my wireless connection keep dropping & reconnecting. My access point does not advertise the SSID.?

Question

I have the SSID and the key. The connection worked without issue earlier this month. What's up?

Answer 1

Check if someone locally has installed a similar unit. You can see this when you use your wireless utility. If so chang your ssid and channel away from theirs. Hiding the ssid does not help security if yyou are encrypted, and makes this problem much worse.

Answer 2

Wifi is not a permanent connection and in actual fact is disconnecting and reconnecting all the time depenind on signal strength. This may not be apparant when web browsing but is very noticible when playing online games.

The key to a stable connection via Wifi is to have a good signal strength. If you are far away from the router trying opening doors that will allow the signal to be stronger.

Regarding the SSID there should not be a problem as long as you have set your computer to the SSID of the router. If it is different than that set on the router then it will always try to change it.

Answer 3

Three things I know of will cause this. One - you are on the fringe of the signal due to something blocking the signal (walls with pipes inside, mirrors, stone faced walls, appliances). Two - interference from cordless phones. I prefer to change the router to channel 11 to preclude wireless phones when they scan for security with the base unit. Three - a neighbor that has a router. You can right click on wireless icon and view available networks. If there are others nearby they should show up and give signal strength. Again channel 11 usually solves this since most people leave the default of 6.

Answer 4

Your neighbor might be using a similar device and the channel used is very much close to your router. Broadcast your SSID so that they will know that you are there and they will use a farther channel to yours.

Answer 5

It's possible a wireless phone / perhaps a neibor's phone is using the same frequency. I've had problems with this when I had 2.4 GHz phones. It would drop the network the moment someone picked up the phone.