Networks [Extra Annoying] Linksys WAG120N Problem

Hey all, would love an answer/solution to this ASAP if possible. It's been plaguing me today and I can't get to the bottom of it. I'm working in an office which has a Linksys WAG120N set up in bridged mode to act as an access point and distribute an ethernet fed connection from the building hub to the phones and laptops in this one office. There are iPhones, Macbooks, Windows laptops of various brands with both N and G wireless adapters in them and also a Mac Pro and two iMacs which are connected wirelessly for the moment. Here's the problem; All of the Apple machines get and hold a connection just fine. The smartphones don't have a problem either. iPhones and HTCs seem to connect fine and never disconnect unexpectedly. The Windows machines though, will not hold a wireless connection. They drop the connection continuously, after anything from 1 minute to 10 minutes. They go from "Local and Internet access" to "Limited Connectivity".

Any ideas? I think the router might be faulty. There is absolutely nothing that I can think of which I haven't tried already to solve this.

Thanks in advance.

 

Firmware upgrade or DD-WRT it. Maybe Tomato if so inclined.

Out of curiosity, what version of Windows? If Vista or 7, try disabling IPv6 altogether as I have had it cause some strange issues in the past.

And are the windows machines the furthest away by chance?

Guessing you have also tried different adapters, USB PCI etc?

 

Already firmware upgraded it to the latest available from Linksys.

A mixture of 7 and Vista laptops, two of them are Toshy Satellite C660-117's and another three that I've tried on it include an Acer Aspire One, a HP Compaq and a Dell Studio. All show the same issues. Have tried new network adapters in the older (Non 802.11n) machines, USB netgear and Belkin ones. No change with them either.

Disabling IPV6 is something that I haven't tried yet. I'll give that a go and if it doesn't work, the temperamental brute is getting a good dose of DD-WRT

The windows machines are no further away than the Apple ones. It's not a massive office, if you removed the partitioning walls they'd most all be within spitting distance of the router.

 

whats controlling the wireless on the windows machines? is it the windows zero config, or some shitty wireless manager. one thing windows does well is managing wireless connections.

if you have any wireless managing software on them, get rid.

with all the onsite visits i do, i have never had a wireless failure due to tcp/ip v6, in fact more often than not, i enable it.

occasionally, you have to download updated drivers for wireless. i presume you tried that.

as you have tried alternate cards, with the same result, it is probably some sort of wireless management software, or the wag120.

on the wag, you can try disabling wpa2, and just using wpa, also as none of your equipment is using n, set to a,g only instead of a,g,n

see how you get on

also you could check what channels other networks are using in your area, with inssider from metageek.

 

No wireless management software on any of the machines, I just let Windows do all that because as you quite rightly said, those utils are more often than not, frankly rubbish.

All laptops ion the office have fully up to date wireless card drivers, that was one of the first things I did.

Haven't tried using just wpa yet. There's a lot of sensitive data floating around that office and I'm very wary of "letting their guard down" at all.

The Toshiba laptops and the Macs are all using 802.11n so it needs to stay on. There may be some merit to your theory about channels though, I'll have to check that out properly but I did try a few different channels already.