[quietjim]

I'm having trouble keeping a DSL connection active. I have an iMac (Snow) connected by wire to a Netgear MR814 router and a Powerbook (Pismo) connected wirelessly via an airport card with WEP enabled. The DSL service is from sbcglobal.net.

The whole setup works fine if the DSL line is turned off and on. The router works and the wireless connection works fine.

My problem is that if I leave everything for a few hours or log off both systems, when I try to start work again, the DSL connection is gone. I've verified that the router is working fine using MyIP ,

I'm stumped...any suggestions?

[jdhindes]

Check with your DSL provider--but my provider told me to get an UPS on the wireless DSL radio and my router. Since I did that I haven't had to restart the radio or the router. My connection uses a Wireless DSL solution with an antenna on my house to get DSL. I was told that any fluctuation in the power can make you have to restart your router and in my case, my DSL radio. Get an UPS. You can pick one up for under $40.

Hope this helps.

Jim

[ghporter]

I would be interested in your router's settings. There is a "keep alive" feature in the setup (aaanorton, you have one of these MR814s-where is that feature?) that keeps the connection up when you're not actively using it. It's on the very first page of my Linksys router's setup, and I have mine set for 180 seconds. With as many as five computers on this network, I like to actually turn most of them OFF when they're not being used, which keeps the room cooler. Overnight, NONE of them are on at all, but when I get up, my connection is there, and I don't have to wait even a little bit to surf (except for startup time, of course).

[aaanorton]

I thought my ears were burning...
If you go to the main set-up page called Basic Settings, you'll have an option (the first one) for whether your connection requires a log in: yes or no. If you select yes, you'll get an Idle Timeout (In Minutes) field. Further than that, I can't really help. I've got cable here that doesn't require a log in (in fact, it took me a little while to find this). Just play around with this. Try 0 minutes, or try leaving the field blank. Maybe that will disable the feature altogether.

[quietjim]

Ok, I tried leaving the field for time out blank: it defaults back to 5 minutes. I also tried setting it to several high values (1440 = 24 hours) but that doesn't seem to work, it defaults back to 5 minutes.

[aaanorton]

Did you try 0 (zero)?

[quietjim]

Yes, I tried 0, that seemed to make it worse.

[aaanorton]

Originally posted by quietjim:
Yes, I tried 0, that seemed to make it worse.

From the router's Help area:

Idle Timeout

An idle Internet connection will be terminated after this time period.

If this value is zero (0), then the connection will be "kept alive" by re-connecting immediately whenever the connection is lost.

Give 0 another shot, but also try unplugging/re-starting it after setting this.

[ghporter]

If zero doesn't work, you should try a LOWER number-like 60-120 seconds. Obviously a 5 minute timeout is too long, and perhaps a zero tells the box not to use the keep alive function at all.