DescentBB

Over the last several months, I've run into an inexplicable phenomena of things just deciding to stop connecting to Wireless N. It seems to happen most on Windows 8, but I've seen it happen on Windows 7 as well. One of two things will happen, either it will not connect at all, or it will connect and pull an ip, but won't pass traffic. I've had this Windows 7 Pro laptop for 4 years, and always, always hooked, every day, to the same router, then one day, it just decided to stop getting on the internet. When I finally shut off the N mode, and forced it into wireless-G, it hooks up and works just fine. I can alternatively shut off the N in the router, and force it to G only, and that will work also. I've also seen this when connecting to wireless hotspots off a droid phone, I've changed security modes, turned security off... nothing works but disabling N.

We've been seeing this happen so much, we've just started shutting off the wireless N in routers before they go out the door so that we don't get s service call on it.

Anyone else been seeing this or know what the cause is?

Check if there were any recent driver updates on the wifi adapter?

Not that I could find. The date on the driver is June of 2013.

The date on the driver doesn't necessarily reflect the date it was installed, just the date it was assembled. However, if you are seeing this on a lot of different computers (mostly running windows 7 and 8 and also on smart phones), I would suspect the problem is with the wifi router/access point and not any of the client devices. I'm guessing the company is using a lot of these specific brand/model of routers right, perhaps its time to try the same devices but on a different brand/make router and see if it still happens.

Yea, its across different brands of devices. Kinda makes me wonder if its something to do with the broadcom chipset and windows/android

Are most of these cases in apartments or other close-set housing?

One issue I've noticed where I live is that over the past couple of years, it's been more and more difficult to find a relatively clean N channel (i.e. one without too much nearby interference from the huge number of routers and other 2.4/5GHz devices).

you could always wrap your house in a Faraday cage, that'll open up all the bands.

This is just an odd problem, it happens on different routers, different devices, different places, busy RF Spectrum and no other networks present... the only common denominator is the wireless N. Any time I move the wireless card, or the router into G only mode, it picks up and works. Changing security on N or running in mixed mode, has no effect. Seem to happen more predominately on Windows 8, but I've seen it happen on 7. Its just so random how it happens.

... I've even given some thought to if network time and the pc time were far enough apart that the security wouldn't work, but that doesn't explain why the G picks up and works where the N is failing.

by default all wireless routers running B/G/N use 20Mhz Narrow Band on N in Multiband mode, change it to 40Mhz Wide band and leave channel on automatic.

Long time since I had to touch this subject!