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Mystery Wifi Internet Problem


vagabond48

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I am hoping that there are knowledgeable techies who can help me with this strange problem.
I have been living in the same high rise building for a very long time. The building provides free Wifi internet.
Of course, I have had the usual internet problems over time but this one has me stomped.
Yesterday, I started having intermittent Wifi internet access. My laptop is either accessing the internet or not for various length of time. It is mostly not accessing the internet.
Let me be clear. I am successfully connecting to the Wifi access point but I am getting NO internet access.
I am running W7 on an Asus K46C.
Yesterday and this morning while I was not able to access internet with my K46C, I was able to get internet access using my travel netbook Asus 1015E running W8.1 .
Yesterday as well as this morning, I went to another floor where a friend lives, and was able to access his own private Wifi internet connection (not the building's) several times each for over 30 minutes without any issues. He is not using the same ISP as the building.

The lobby and the other floors have their own wifi access points and have caused the same problem for me.
I have troubleshooted this problem a number of times. When troubleshooting Wifi network adapter, I get "problem with wireless adapter or access point fixed" which does not fix the problem or another message "your computer appears to be correctly configured but the device or resource (DNS server) is not responding.
Within device manager, I have uninstalled the Wifi device and then re-installed it which did not fix the problem.
I also normally use Google and OpnDNS alternate DSN addresses which I re-entered after re-installing the wifi but testing the connection 1st before entering them.
I have searched Google and find someone with a similar problem but no solution given.
Does anyone have "concrete" suggestions on how to solve this problem.

Edited by vagabond48
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Appears your building access to internet is defective and needs a check. Have you spoken to anyone? Should be others having the same problems but if not using often they may not notice/report.

Perhaps, but how does it explain the fact that my other netbook had internet access but not mine.

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Missed that. Are you sure connection was to building WiFi and not other provider (3G or something)? But I would start with building tech support to check if they have changed anything as you said it previously has worked fine. Your using OK with friends WiFi seems to show you are OK.

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As KittenKong recommend, delete the connection and reestablish. That has worked for me before over the years.

Also, do you know if your Wifi chip "driver" possibly updated itself very recently? Check the current driver date? Laptop drivers can be very picky and if Windows automatic update replaces the "laptop specific driver" with its own driver which still "should" work fine but sometimes don't, it can cause problems exactly like you are experiencing as that was the problem it caused on my Toshiba laptop. I would reload the Toshiba specific Wifi chip driver from the Toshiba website and then the offending Windows driver I marked as not to install/download by Hiding it in the Windows Update menu.

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Actually this just sounds like the buildings internet was down.. their connection that is.

Its normal..

Happens in my building from time to time also..

Also, lately due to internet becoming bit strange.. better use VPN

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The problem has gone away after 2 annoying days. As lopburi3 wrote, it may have been a building equipment problem. I met the owner's daughter and after giving me all kinds of silly excuses she said she would reset the modem. I continued to have the problem that day but the following day it was gone. Perhaps. she did reset the equipment but waited until the next morning.

Thanks for the comments.

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Is your Wi-Fi connection is constant but you are sometimes able, sometimes unable make requests to the internet? If so, it's possible the building's uplink is saturated, or perhaps downlink.

Is it that you have to keep connecting and disconnecting from the Wi-Fi to get access? If so, there may be a problem with the DHCP service on your local router. Out of the box they're usually configured to lease 200 addresses (or so) for 24 hours. If you have a floor full of people with computers, tablets and phones connecting and disconnecting all day the lease table can fill up pretty quickly and the DHCP server will stop giving out addresses. This would account for one device being able to access but not another. You might try setting up a fixed IP to fix this but you'll have to guess where the DHCP address range begins and ends.

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Is your Wi-Fi connection is constant but you are sometimes able, sometimes unable make requests to the internet? If so, it's possible the building's uplink is saturated, or perhaps downlink.

Yes but the Asus K46C was mostly unable to access the internet but as I wrote my other netbook Asus 1015E was not having that problem.

Is it that you have to keep connecting and disconnecting from the Wi-Fi to get access?

No. Connecting and disconnecting did not fix the problem.

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Actually this just sounds like the buildings internet was down.. their connection that is.

Its normal..

Happens in my building from time to time also..

Also, lately due to internet becoming bit strange.. better use VPN

No offense but you didn't read my post. I never said the internet was down just that I wasn't getting it on my main laptop but was on my other one.

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Actually this just sounds like the buildings internet was down.. their connection that is.

Its normal..

Happens in my building from time to time also..

Also, lately due to internet becoming bit strange.. better use VPN

No offense but you didn't read my post. I never said the internet was down just that I wasn't getting it on my main laptop but was on my other one.

Sorry, yes skimmed through it.. Actually I had this model pc before once.. and it had similar issues also got very hot, and alot of bluescreen issues randomly.

I finally got sick of it gave it away free to a friends son.

One time i had a similar issue you spoke of.. and the network card jut would not work or connect. I had to unscrew the whole thing.. clean all the dust, clean all contacts , reinsert all plug n plag interfaces like the expandable memory cards, hard disk, etc..

after that it worked again.

Although ,, in the end as said just got sick of the constant problems with it, even took it back to asus paid some $ to fix it, but I feel it was never really fixed..

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