Archive for January, 2007

NetGear WPNT834 Router fails when ThinkPad T60p is connected via Wireless

Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007

Netgear has released a firmware update to fix the problem. See “New Firmware Fixes Problem” below.

Symptom

The original symptom of this problem was that my entire home network would fall apart about 5 minutes after I fired up my Lenovo ThinkPad T60p. I played with all the settings in the NetGear WPNT834 and the property sheets for my wireless card with no success.

I was able to successfully use 3 other wireless cards to connect to the router which lead me to believe that the problem was an interaction between the specific card in my laptop and the router, not just the router.

Lenovo Support

Adjust the ‘Performance’ setting to maximum. (From “Computer Manager”, double click the Intel card under the network adapters section. On the second tap, scroll down to “Performance” and set the slider to maximum). This seemed to have no effect, but maybe it will help you.

This turned out to be on the right track, but still wrong.

NetGear support

Completely useless and condescending. They really need to get new technical support people over there. These guys walked me through changing a bunch of settings (in excruciating detail), none of which seemed to have any effect. I insisted that the problem was with my brand new laptop sending some kind of bogus packet to the router which confused it (which turned out to be absolutely correct). The tech support people insisted that this was not the problem, and that I was the only one reporting this issue (both wrong).

Google “Support”

I searched for various combinations of ‘ThinkPad’ ‘Intel’ ‘3945ABG’(Wireless card name) ‘NetGear’ ‘WPNT834′(Router name) and found the following articles to be the most interesting:

Diagnosis

It seems that the Intel 3945ABG wireless card that shipped with my laptop sends out ‘null QoS’ frames. (I suspect it’s probing to see if the wireless access point supports QoS, which the WPNT834 does not). This somehow is able to confuse the IP layer in the router, causing the router to no longer respond to IP traffic (note: it still seems to handle the wireless association at the MAC layer, just no IP traffic).

Solution

Downloaded the latest drivers from Intel. I would have expected these drivers to be updated via Windows Update or Lenovo Update, but alas… This brought me up to:

  • Intel PROSet/Wireless Software version 10.5.0.1

  • Device Driver 10.5.1.59

Turn off “QoS packet scheduler” (Control Panel -> Network Connections -> (card) -> Properties -> General -> QoS Packet Scheduler

Reset all card settings to ‘default’ (Computer Manager -> Network Adapeters -> (card) -> Advanced -> Scroll through all ‘properties’ and check ‘default’)

Apply the ”beta” firmware release 1.4.4. A link to the file can be found at dslreports.com which will require you to register (free) before you can actually download the file.

Follow up

It’s now been a month, and I have no problems to report. Both my old and new network cards are working fine and I haven’t even touched the router.

New Firmware Fixes Problem

NetGear has released an official firmware update that solves the problem. I have installed this update and have experienced no problems (it has been several weeks now).

Other

From reading the various message boards, it sounds like there’s a Linksys router that is also affected the same way… If you’re having similar problems with slightly different hardware, I would search Google with the exact model number of both your router and your wireless card. (Don’t search for your laptop’s model) If you see posts about QoS frames/packets and rebooting routers, it’s likely the same problem that I experienced… Unfortunately, installing netgear’s beta firmware on another router is probably a bad idea… ;-)

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