ProudGrandma Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 why would some of our computers and our smart TV be "online" while one of our computers and our 2 tablets not be? What I mean is this...up until about 3 days ago, everything received internet...our TV, our computers and our tablets....and now all of a sudden, only one of the computers and our TV will receive an internet connection and the others don't. Everything is close to each other...it is really goofy. any thoughts or ideas for me?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrs Mungo Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 Some wireless cards connect better than others. Unplug your wireless router, count to ten, plug it back in. Turn all of the non-connecting devices off and back on again. The wireless card in one of our computers has a known issue with our router. I sometimes have to restart it a couple of times before it will connect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProudGrandma Posted August 3, 2014 Author Share Posted August 3, 2014 We did try that a couple times...no luck. It's really weird. But, i will try it again for good measure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aelwydd Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 You may have a recent source of interference pop up somewhere around your house. More likely, your router is going bad and needs to be replaced. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrs Mungo Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 You may have a recent source of interference pop up somewhere around your house. More likely, your router is going bad and needs to be replaced. Or one of the cables could have gone bad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProudGrandma Posted August 3, 2014 Author Share Posted August 3, 2014 but if the router is going bad...or one of the wires..then why would some of the devices work, while others don't. Excuse my ignorance...to me that doesn't make sense. However, the router is old...so... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrs Mungo Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 but if the router is going bad...or one of the wires..then why would some of the devices work, while others don't. Excuse my ignorance...to me that doesn't make sense. However, the router is old...so... Because some wireless cards play more nicely with certain routers and/or can pick up a weak signal better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProudGrandma Posted August 3, 2014 Author Share Posted August 3, 2014 no power outages. I am assuming you guys think we need to get a new router then, right? However, now that I think about it... when we try to connet our tablets using a different router, it still doesn't work. Why would that be? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jenn- Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 Even without a power outage, has there been any rain/storms in the last few days? We have had our house hit with brown outs where the frying charge came over the stupid cable lines instead of the power lines. We've had anywhere from just a few ports that got hit to a massive failure across most of our electronics that are hard wired in to our internet. Have you had any recent updates to the tablets? Which ones are they? Have you tried using a public wi-fi spot to see if it would work? Have you done a hard restart on everything? This might take some research on how to accomplish this. Have you tried telling it to forget the network and then reenter the network info? Have you handed it to your techy dh after doing everything you can think of all day long for him to wave his magic fingers over it and it suddenly starts behaving again? Oh wait, that's what usually happens here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arcadia Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 but if the router is going bad...or one of the wires..then why would some of the devices work, while others don't.It is like our cellphones, some are better at picking up the signals than others. For example when the internet traffic is heavy at my home, my iPod is mostly likely to lose the internet signal while my laptop would be stable but slow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aelwydd Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 but if the router is going bad...or one of the wires..then why would some of the devices work, while others don't. Excuse my ignorance...to me that doesn't make sense. However, the router is old...so...Without going into detail, I work in networking tech. It's very common for routers to go bad (antennas fail, etc.) and need to be replaced, especially as many of them are built like so much crap. It doesn't have to fail all at once, but have one or more components going. Also, you should check to see if your router's firmware has been recently updated. If your firmware version is very old, that can cause performance issues. Conversely, if a brand new version has just been loaded to the device, there could be "bugs" in the new version that are causing incompatibilities between the router and the connecting devices. Logically, you would not likely have two or more connecting devices suddenly have their wireless cards fail at the same time. That leaves either a signaling issue at the source (router), or something is interfering with that signal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kroe1 Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 We just went through this with Verizon. Their excuse was that we had too many devices searching for wifi signals. If you have a personal account, you are sharing with neighbors also. So if more people in the neighborhood plug in, the more devices will get bumped from the system. We started counting and I think we found about twelve or more devices trying to connect at once. Remember all those video game systems, phones, tvs, computers, and tablets are all trying to search for signals, some even while not in use. The solution was a router booster device that now sits in my kitchen, grr. So instead of one internet connection in the house, it makes it look like there are five. Each has a different password. Now we just set the wifi for different addresses for different devices. I wish I was more technical to explain this better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanny Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 Your Router is also acting as a DHCP Server. It provides a "Private" IP address to each device on your local network (LAN). Those numbers might begin with 192.168.1.x for example. If your Router has stopped providing IP addresses to all of the devices on your network, for some reason, then you may need to replace your router. There are also other possibilities with the symptoms you have described. The Router, like any sensitive electronic device, should, at the minimum, be plugged into a Surge Protector. Ours is plugged into the UPS for this Desktop and my Laptop. If you have devices connected by Ethernet cables to your Router, it could be that port(s) have gone bad. Two days ago, there was a huge explosion near our house. Probably an electrical transformer. It sounded like possibly 1 or 2 blocks away. When the power was restored, our next door neighbors on one side had lost their Internet access. Probably their Router and/or Splitter were fried, when the electrical issue occurred. My wife gave them the PW for our WiFi so they can (hopefully) use our WiFi until the phone company comes out next week to restore their service. If you know the username and password for your Router, you can access it via your web browser (ours is 192.168.1.1) and you can click around, to see if there are any warnings or errors that are obvious to you. Also, if you can do that, you may be able to reset it, however that could cause you to lose all connectivity, so I would suggest you do not reset it, unless your ISP tells you to do so. GL ETA: You can ask the Tech Support of your ISP to Remotely Access your Router, to see if they see any issues. If it is something in the Software or Firmware, hopefully they can fix it for you, Remotely. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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