Disconnects pretty often with Linksys WRT54G routers at house, especially on battery power. Never drops on campus, i know they have different access points/better signals/etc, but i shouldn't drop this much at home.

anyone know bout this? possible fix?

9/11/2006 9:35:32 AM

i'd look at the AP first. are there a lot of other AP's nearby on the same channel? any other sources of interference?

alternately, you may want to consider replacing the AP with something with a bit more power. i had a similar issue with my Netgear router.

9/11/2006 10:18:44 AM

wrt54g routers drop pretty often anyway. i had one and it dropped my notebook and my roommate's desktop no matter where it was placed in the apt.

9/11/2006 10:59:48 AM

i've never had any problem whatsoever with my wrt54g v5...firmware update, maybe?

9/11/2006 11:13:29 AM

i dont have problems with the routers... they're solid with windows machines... my problem is with the mbpro. we have two WRT54G's at the apt. they both have always worked fine for windows machines, and even with an ibook. this is specific to the mbpro

9/11/2006 11:18:08 AM

In our appartment we use that same router for 4 computers and a wireless mp3 streamer. Two machines are connected using cheap usb 802.11g adapters, 2 use d-link pci 802.11g adapters, and the netgear mp3 streamer has it's own built in antennae. The only machines that don't constantly lose connection are the ones with the cheap smc brand usb adapters. The WRT54G line of routers is extremely flakey and pretty much everyone I know who has this router has had problems with it; that's not saying EVERYONE will have problems with it though.

Try updating the firmware. If that doesn't help then you might want to try a new router. I know you feel the fact that it's worked with every other computer in your appartment would eliminate the router as the source of the problem, but my experience with that particular model tells me never to rule it out as the cause of a problem. If your macbook pro is working fine on other wireless networks (like the campus nomad wireless) and not on the linksys routers then I would tend to blame the linksys routers.

Of course, if new firmware updates don't help and you have problems on different routers too, then take it to the apple store and tell them you're having intermitent failure with the wireless and that you've tried it on multiple networks and different routers. They should be able to do SOMETHING fairly quickly.

Read these two different review summaries on the same router with different firmware to get an idea how bad the original firmware with these routers was:

First review-

http://www.tomsnetworking.com/2003/01/17/linksys_wap54g_wireless/page10.html

Second review-

http://www.tomsnetworking.com/2005/06/06/linksys_wrt54g_wireless/page11.html

Yes, these reviews both refer to it as a draft 802.11g router. The model has been around for quite some time, though it has seen a lot of firmware updates. Chances are good that unless you've updated it yourself, the firmware in it is around 2-3 years out of date and still using draft 802.11g garbage that can cause huge interoperability issues.

[Edited on September 11, 2006 at 12:42 PM. Reason : ]

9/11/2006 12:31:32 PM