Wireless internet card keep dropping the IP

I have the WUSB54G on my buisness laptop and it works fine 95% of the time but every once in a while it will drop its IP address and will be connected to the network (access point) but not the internet. Then after a few reboots or 30 minutes of wait time it finally gets an IP again and the internet works fine again. Is there anythign I can do to help stop this? It has plenty of signal (50-75%) so I know its not the reception thats the problem. The computer is using XP and I am using the windows wireless controls. So if anyone has any advise I am all ears.

make sure the the reciever and the access point are running the same channel.

I would think that is auto-configured. (But it's a good thing to check.) What router do you have? Do you have encryption enabled? (My D-Link DI-614+ can tend to do this when WEP or WPA is enabled. If a connection is dropped and the client fails to connect, it'll refuse to reconnect, even with the proper encryption key.) If you do have encryption enabled, try disabling it (for the moment) and see if that affects the issue. (Hopefully, you're already doing MAC filtering on your network.) -- Paul

The channels are fine, the adapter connects to the router and gets a signal but it wont find the internet and I wont have an IP. And if it matters I have a WRT54G router. I also tried it without WEP and it still has the same problem, 95% of the time it works, sometimes it will loose the internet connection and then reconnect right away and my work will be unaffected but every so often it drops the IP and cant refresh and cant get on the internet.

Although the channels are fine (as you mentioned), changing the channel on the router might help in the event that something is interfering at that frequency. Thanks for the other info.

An interesting thought: is anybody using a microwave or cordless phone nearby at those instances where the connection is dropped? (IIRC, microwave ovens put out some EM at 2.4 GHz range and can interfere, and of course so do most cordless phones, etc.)

I also just read (after googling for "wrt54g drop connection") that if your adapter uses some sort of power savings feature that lowers the speed of the connection when not in use, it could cause the connection to be lost. So checking to see if there are any power management options enabled client-side might help. (Question: Does it happen more often when on batteries than when pluggedin? Some drivers apply different power schemes depending upon your power source.) -- Paul

Thats very helpful, it looks like I have a few things to check up on. I will post back in a few days with what I find.

Good luck! And please do let us know how things turn out and what does and doesn't work. -- Paul

PS: I love your avatar. Nicely done!

Well I changed the channel and now it works flawlessly, thanks for the suggestions everyone.

Glad to hear it worked out for you! Thanks for following up. -- Paul