DWL650 disconnects every 5 minutes

[Jim Carter]

On Sun, 17 Nov 2002, J A wrote:
> I just bought a D-Link DWL650 and the install was OK.
> Problem: every 5 min. or so the connection is lost...
> I am using a Netgear MR814 wireless router.

I haven't seen this specific problem, but when I read your message
something popped into my head.  I set up an aggressive firewall on my
laptop that blocked bootpc, and after 20 minutes my connection got chopped.
The reason was that I was failing to renew the lease on my IP address and
not responding to prompts originated by the DHCP server.  When I accepted
bootpc (originated from the server), my connection stayed up.

The other person who had a similar failure on WinXP but not Win2K: WinXP
has a "black hole" firewall feature, which if turned on would prevent lease
renewal.  There's no evidence that this is actually the problem, and a 5
minute lease time seems awfully short, but it's worth checking out.

James F. Carter          Voice 310 825 2897    FAX 310 206 6673
UCLA-Mathnet;  6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095-1555
Email: jimc at math.ucla.edu  http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key)