Why must I repair wireless connection on workstations?

plp384123 · ‎10-18-2011

I have a WRV210 router setup with WPA personal-AES encryption...SSID is turned on. The issue is that workstations lose connectivity to the internet and to a mapped network drive on the server. When this happens I find that the wireless status shows "connected", along with excellent signal strength. It never happens when logging on, just after so many minutes. The simple remedy is to repair wireless connection but we would like to not have to resort to this behavior every day. Further, I found that within the repair connection sequence that deleting the address resolution protocol table, brings the internet and the ability to access a mapped network drive back. I even used a program called arpfreeze to assign static ip's to the arp table and I still had to repair wireless connection. It does not matter where the workstations are placed, whether sitting 50 feet away or 5 feet from the router, the workstations lose the ability to access internet and mapped drive while showing "connected" and excellect signal strength. Any info or advice would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise, we are looking at running ethernet cables through the building (Not easy).

Eric Moyers · ‎10-18-2011

Hi, My name is Eric Moyers. I am a Network Support Engineer in the Cisco Small Business Support Center. Thank you for using the Cisco Community Post Forums.

I am sorry that you are having this issue. Has this issue always been present or has it just crept up? What is the current version of firmware on the router? How many users?

Thanks

Eric Moyers

Cisco Network Support Engineer

CCNA, CCNA-Wireless

1-866-606-1866

plp384123 · ‎10-18-2011

Hi Eric, thank you for replying. This issue has been present since day one. Looking at the Router status, the hardware version is WRTR-221G_V01 and the software version is 2.0.0.11.

mpyhala · ‎10-18-2011

Paul,

I used a WRV210 at home for a few years and never saw such a problem. Please answer the following so we can try to figure what is happening:

How many PCs are connected wirelessly? Wired?
Have you tested any PCs with static IP addresses?
What is the DHCP lease time?
Are all PCs affected at the same time?

plp384123 · ‎10-18-2011

1. Three wirelessly, 2 wired

2. Both wired computers have static ips and work fine. Have not tried assigning static ip to any of the wireless clients.

3. Not sure what the lease time is. DHCP is disabled on the router because the server does DHCP. Not exactly sure how to find it on the server but I do know that this problem has happened even when the router had DHCP enabled.

4. I can recall a time when I had all 3 workstations running. I could go around to each computer and receive error messages related to trying to use remote desktop connection. I would try to log in to the server and it would give me an error. It doesn't affect a wireless computer that has been off during the time and suddenly turned on. If I click repair, on the connection, then I regain connectivity to the internet and server. I can also regain connectivity by opening command prompt and typing in "arp -d". Also when I look at the arp table, nothing looks unusual.

plp384123 · ‎11-03-2011

Bump!

I've thought about buying a range extender but this problem occurs even on a laptop sitting 5 feet from the router.....it probably won't help a bit. Is there anything I could be missing on the server or the workstations as far as configuration is concerned? Would it help to assign static ip's and dns to the workstations?