I give up on WPA.

[jimnms]

I'm tired of my HTPC with wireless nic in the livingroom droping off the network. I thought it was the network card because the notebook never droped when I used it wirelessly. The only difference is when I had the notebook disconnected from the LAN and on wireless, I was constantly using it so it never dropped. It seems as long as I'm activly using the network it doesn't drop, but the HTPC just sits there, downloads TV listings once a week and I copy recorded shows from it every now and then. Just about every time I needed to connect to it, it wasn't on the network. I'm tired of going in there and screwing with it to get it to reconnect, have you ever used WinXP on a TV before? It's not easy to see wtf you're doing on such a low res screen.

I had some time today to play with it, so I took the notebook in the livingroom with it connected wirelessly. I left it sitting idle, and rebooted both the notebook and HTPC. They both connected to the network, and I came back to the PC in my room. I browsed some news sites, and checked on the computers every few minutes. It didn't take long before both of them dropped off the network.

I then reconfigured the AP to 64bit WEP, and repeated the test. It's been two hours and both are still there. What is it with WPA that causes the computers to drop off the network?

 

[awdark]

Dont know but from what I read 64bit wep is usually secure enough.

Perhaps ssid was disabled and your htpc liked to unassociate from your network?

 

[jimnms]

SSID broadcast is enabled, there is another wireless network just out of range (different channel though) which it picks up when the conditions are just right. I already discovered that Windows likes to connect to networks broadcasting SSID before those that don't, even if it's not a prefered network.

 

[oldpablo]

WPA on or off, I disconnect probably once a day. Maybe it has something to do with the 5 other wireless networks that show up in my wireless config utility...