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Geek Culture / maintaining wireless connection

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Virtual Nomad
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Posted: 16th Aug 2012 17:51 Edited at: 16th Aug 2012 17:52
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my parents have comcast cable internet connected via a belkin wireless router. when the system goes to sleep, or they sit too long on the same web page, the connection gets lost and they have to re-establish the connection, which gets old as they have to reconnect many times throughout the day.

i've looked at the power settings and set everything i can find to not let the wireless adapter go to sleep or lose connection. anything anyone can suggest would be appreciated. same applies to the router configuration; anything i should look for there? (i have hard-line cable myself so not experienced with router workings/configuring.

FYI, i've looked at some of the freeware "keep connection" software as a possible solution. i assume it regularly pings a location so the system knows the internet is being used and maintains the connection (ie, everything's fine if they're streaming a youtube playlist for extended periods of time. if/when the playlist ends, it'll go to sleep soon after if they don't babysit it). if anyone has a recommended app or similar, i'd like to find the minimal/least-intrusive offering (there's some bloatware out there).

thanks

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Van B
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Posted: 16th Aug 2012 18:03
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When you say 'Go to sleep' - Have you found that option for 'Allow Windows to power down this device?' option?

That's usually the cause of loosing connections, it's on by default, but I imagine that you've already checked that.

One option may be to have something like DropBox installed, maybe having something that checks the internet every X seconds would be enough to keep the connection active.

Health, Ammo, and bacon and eggs!
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Virtual Nomad
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Posted: 16th Aug 2012 18:15 Edited at: 16th Aug 2012 18:19
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Quote: "Allow Windows to power down this device?"

yeah, checked that and anything (obviously) similar to me.

Quote: "dropbox"

there are apps out there that just check the internet every X seconds. dropbox would be a bigger footprint than necessary (i expect?). i'm sure i could write a tiny app using dbpro to accomplish similar with minimal overhead. if an ideal one already existed, it would save me some trouble (so i don't have to install dbpro, etc, on their system to test & tweak).

add: i should mention that they run a win7 system. as i use vista, i'm not thoroughly familiar with it.

Virtual Nomad @ California, USA . DBPro V7.7
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bitJericho
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Posted: 16th Aug 2012 18:37
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hmm odd. You can make a batch script ping your gateway IP address every few minutes, that should keep your connection live.

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Virtual Nomad
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Posted: 17th Aug 2012 02:30
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it's been 15 years since i wrote a bacth file. can you provide code, please?

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bitJericho
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Posted: 17th Aug 2012 02:56 Edited at: 17th Aug 2012 02:59
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actually, instead of having the batch script do it, instead make a simple task. Go to task scheduler, make the action any time someone logs into the computer. Make it wait 1 minute and repeat every 5 or whatever. The command to run should be "ping" without quotes. The arguments should be your gateway IP (maybe 192.168.0.1), and -n 1 to mean just ping it once. So the arguments look like this "192.168.0.1 -n 1" without quotes. Oh and make sure "hidden" is checkmarked!

darkBIT TGC Torrent Tracker / File Server - AGK Chat: #agk : irc.devhat.net
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MrValentine
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Posted: 17th Aug 2012 11:22
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Did you check the Device Manager options for the Wireless stick/card?

Also check the BIOS too... Power saving features might be shutting the USB down... etc...

But if the already aforementioned solutions work,

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