Hey guys. I need some serious help with a problem that is seriously driving me nuts. If you don't care about my setup, skip down to the problem to see what I want help with.
The Setup
Here are the basics. I live in a two-story townhome apartment. There are three rooms: one large room downstairs with two people in it and two smaller rooms upstairs with one person each. I live in one of the upstairs rooms. I have multiple machines in my room that must be connected together with a switch of some sort since the amount of traffic between my machines is so high that the wireless speeds would unsatisfactory and the wireless network would get bogged down by the traffic.
We currently have a D-Link DI-612 as the focal point of our network. I have three machines in my machines that are connected with wires. The other upstairs room has one machine connected wirelessly with a D-Link DWL-G510. The downstairs room has two machines that run a D-Link DWL-G132 and a Zonet ZEW2501.
The router is currently set to use Channel 1 as almost all of my neighbors with routers use Channel 6 and a couple use Channel 11. We have a total of three cordless phones that operate in the 2.4GHz range.
The Problem
These are the symptoms that I experience:
- Whenever a cordless phone is used near (within a few feet) the router or the phone rings for more than three seconds, all the wireless connections will drop, the router will go into a kind of locked state for about 15-20 seconds, and the router will reboot itself.
- Reboots at seemingly random times. The router cannot go a day without rebooting itself. Sometimes there will be a few hours between reboots, at other times, less than a minute.
- Router drops broadband connection at seemingly random times. I have removed the router, tested the connection, and confirmed that the router is the issue, not the connection. Sometimes the dropped connection will also cause the router to quickly recycle (drop and renegotiate) all the connections (note that the router does not reboot in this instance; rather, it is actually just reforming all the connections).
What I have tried
- Using every firmware available for extended periods of time.
- Tweaking all the available settings: turning off the "Super G" mode, changing the preamble, changing the channel, turning off UPnP, turning off Gaming Mode, changing the security, etc.
- Moving the router to many different locations in the apartment in many different orientations.
- Using the Windsurfer from FreeAntennas.com.
- Praying
- Cursing
What I know
- The DI-624 router is notorious for it's poor stability and frequent rebooting.
- The 2.4 GHz phones need to go.
- Apartment complexes and wireless equipment don't mix very well.
- When we first moved in, we were all connected with wires. It was a mess. I had all sorts of cables running out of my room, which caused many people to trip. Each time someone would trip on a cable, someone's connection died. Sometimes I would have to just mess with the cable, and sometimes I'd have to put a new jack on it.
I got the wireless devices to alleviate these problems, which just created a series of new ones.
Because of the design of the apartment and the fact that it is an aparment and not a house that we own, it is not possible to do a clean wired installation. In other words, there will always be a giant mess of cables if we go back to wired connections. It is for this reason that I don't want to go back to a wired installation.
What I need advice on
Sorry for all that info. I want to provide as much as possible so I get good responses.
- I know that I need to get rid of the 2.4GHz phones, but I don't know if that will make enough difference. We share a wall with two neighbors, and I'm sure that at least one of them has at least one 2.4GHz phone. Their phones probably help create some of the reboots not caused by our phones.
Are there routers that can perform well even with all this frequency noise?
- I'm sold on the idea that my DI-624 router is junk and is the cause of most of my problems. So much so that I am considering never purchasing from D-Link again.
How many of my problems are caused by my router? In other words, if I purchase a different router with a better track record, will all of my problems go away or just some?
Am I right in planning on avoiding D-Link? Is Linksys, Buffalo, or Belkin really any better or did I just get a bad model?
- Can a MIMO-enabled router help resolve any of the issues I'm experiencing?
I appreciate any advice that you can give.
