[PLUG] Laptop wireless problem - resolved

[Ben Koenig]

On Sun, Feb 9, 2020 at 2:44 PM Nat Taylor <bioborg at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think it could be a DHCP issue.  Like the router didn’t keep the
> connection alive but wouldn’t give out a new one because it wasn’t all the
> way dead.  You might try kicking the laptop off thru the routers webadmin,
> then trying to reconnect next time.  I’m sure there is a more technical way
> to put this but I’ve had it happen before...
>

The technical term for that is the DHCP lease. The router maintains a list
of all devices that have been assigned addresses via DHCP and reserves each
IP for a pre-determined amount of time. When a  device's "lease" is up, the
IP address will typically change. This is determined by the software and in
the case of buggy routers can be problematic because the router has to
juggle the timers for all the different devices on the router. If the DHCP
software is poorly designed or configured, it can result in IP conflicts
and other glitches. Since his phone was working fine, it's possible that
his router was trying to assign the same IP for both devices, resulting in
a conflict and resulting in one of them getting preferential treatment over
the other.

In this case it's hard to tell what is happening since we only have 1 data
point, and DHCP issues can also be a side effect of hardware failure or bad
firmware updates. What Denis could do here is start a log of all
network-related issues he enounters, noting the time, failure, and solution
each time this kind of thing happens. After several months of rebooting his
router every time it does this, he would have some really juicy info that
we could use to find a pattern of failure. So if this is related to the
DHCP leases, he would probably notice that this error occurs every time the
lease for one of his devices is renewed, and would therefore repeat based
on that configuration setting.

IMO it's much more likely that his router sits in a corner accumulating
dust, and after months of 24/7 operation it got a little hot and started to
act glitchy.



> On Sun, Feb 9, 2020 at 12:53 PM Russell Senior <russell at personaltelco.net>
> wrote:
>
> > I have a laptop with an intel radio that very occasionally just decides
> to
> > stop working. I'm able to recover without rebooting by rmmod'ing a few
> > related modules and then modprobe'ing them again. But if you had to
> reboot
> > the access point to recover, then that's probably not your problem.
> >
> > On Sun, Feb 9, 2020 at 8:25 AM Denis Heidtmann <
> denis.heidtmann at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Well, Russell, you were right.
> > > I had already recycled my laptop to no effect.  And since the wireless
> > was
> > > available to my phone, I thought that the router could not be the
> issue,
> > > but for completeness I power cycled it this morning.  Solved the
> problem.
> > > So where do you suspect the confused driver resides?
> > >
> > > Thanks for your help.
> > > -Denis
> > >
> > > On Sat, Feb 8, 2020 at 2:29 PM Russell Senior <
> russell at personaltelco.net
> > >
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Drivers can get confused. The easy thing to try is to reboot.
> > > > Unloading/reloading the module is less extreme. Rebooting the router
> is
> > > > another thing to try.
> > > >
> > > > On Sat, Feb 8, 2020 at 2:24 PM Denis Heidtmann <
> > > denis.heidtmann at gmail.com>
> > > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > As of this morning my Lenovo X240 will not connect to my wireless.
> > It
> > > > > cycles between "connecting" and "disconnected".  The signal
> strength
> > > is
> > > > > shown as "excellent".  The modem lists my laptop as connected.  My
> > > phone
> > > > > seems to connect fine.
> > > > >
> > > > > I am completely ignorant of what to check nor what to look for.  A
> > > > clueless
> > > > > person needs help.
> > > > >
> > > > > Thanks,
> > > > > -Denis
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