A couple of days ago my wifi started acting up. Sometimes everything will be fine and everything will load as normal but more often than not pages just won’t load or I will have to reload them 4 or 5 times before they load properly. This has been happening on chrome firefox and internet explorer but chrome is saying that the DNS lookup has failed whilst firefox just says that it can’t reach the server (I assume these are the same thing?)

When I open the task manager I can see that although I’m connected to the network I’m not actually receiving any data when the pages don’t load but at other times I’m receiving data fine (I can still stream netflix albeit after a couple of attempts.)

The only thing that I could think off to try and fix it was to change the wifi channel to a quieter one but that hasn’t made a difference.

Does anyone know what might be causing the issue or how to sort it?

Thanks in advance.

P.S I’ve ran three different anti-virus scans and they have all came back clean.

Flakey service? Cost ..new broadband provider
Flakey router? Our stopped doing wifi completely.. Cost we changed provider (or sign a new 12month contract with current one) and got a new one free.

Our issues came with Talktalk, they’d been fine for 12months but regular dropout & a general price increases, meant we looked elsewhere & the service/wifi been fine since.

can you log on to the router and get your line stats?

Have just tried the old unplug it & leave it 10 mins on the router thing?

First thing to do is plug directly into your router with an ethernet cable.

That will quickly rule out or confirm if its your WiFi (The WiFi is only the wireless connection from your computer to the router – not the connection to the internet at large)

If the problem still persists, phone your provider. They will at first instance give you a new router as this is standard procedure.

You then need to phone up a second time and they may run some diagnostics, they may not, but normally after the 2nd call you’ll find service resumes. Usually caused by an error at your local exchange.

I forgot to mention that the wifi works fine on my housemates laptop just not mine so I don’t think there is anything wrong with actual internet connection.

anjs – I’ve logged into the router and it’s saying the download speed is 8.5Mbps and the upload speed is 1.08Mbps.

Try changing WiFi Channels, if you have a smart phone, download a WiFi analaliser and see what all your neighbors routers are on, then choose a channel that is least used.

I thought that the WiFi channel might have been the issue originally as the channel I was on was quite crowded but after changing to the quietest one it hasn’t made a difference 🙁

What OS?

Sounds like the lappy might be the problem. Apple? (think some MB Airs were a bit flaky in the WiFi dept. but there’s some fix now).

If it were me, I’d try:
– LAN cable to rule out the ISP DSL side of things
– WiFi and LAN cable to other devices (NAS perhaps) on the local LAN
– Turn it off and Scan for wifi on the Lappy/Phone (maybe a neighbour with same SSID? unlikely in this case but possibility if wifi connections fail)
– Try connecting lappy to another network somewhere
(edit: and when trying the WiFi sit right next to it, not at the other end of the house/garden)

It’s a lenovo laptop running windows 8 and sky broadband.

Cheers andy I’ll try those steps over the weekend. My house mate does have a WiFi repeater in his room but he’s had it for a month and I’ve only started having issues over the past couple of days so I don’t think that’s the problem but I’ll give the other steps you mentioned a try.

sky broadband.

This, is it the Netgear router or the newer home hub?

if Netgear then this again, mine dropped out all the time but there are 5 of us trying to attach to it via wifi at times.

Have just tried the old unplug it & leave it 10 mins on the router thing?

I am not fully up tp speed with wifi, I dont pretend to be, so if its rubbish I am talking sorry, but my sky/netgear router would do this all the time with multiple users, phones, laptops etc, there was usually one device that was struggling to attach/link up.

Oh… and one other thing to check is that the house mate is not maxing out the broadband downloading movies etc. 😉

tinsy I’m not sure which one it is but it’s made by Sagem if that helps. Turning it off and on again only seems to be a temporary fix and it’ll go back to struggling to load pages after 5 minutes or so

Oh and if there are quite a few people sharing (probably more likely on Virgin Media) then I’d also think about ISP throttling too. If it slows right down or drops connections in the evenings, but not at any other time, then it could be someone watching too much iPlayer or downloading flicks and then the fair use thing kicks in for a few hours. Friend could trigger the Virgin Media “unlimited” (rofl 😉 ) broadband limits very easily.

Sky don’t do that, it’s truly unlimited (unless you’re on their crappy Connect plan, which is actually BT Wholesale rather than Sky).

Try with an ethernet cable as others have suggested. If your flatmate’s works, swap their locations over temporarily and see if the fault follows the laptop.

Switch everything else off that’s on the network, see if the problem persists.

Run the Lenovo Update program; there will almost certainly be a newer driver available than the one it shipped with.

Are you using a WiFi dongle or the laptops built in WiFi antennae?

You can try updating the firmware if its the built in version, or try buying a cheap dongle to use to see if that fixies things.

I use this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Netgear-Wireless-300-USB-Adapter/dp/B003G2Z1M6/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1374849682&sr=8-3&keywords=netgear+wifi+dongle

Whilst not “cheap” (There are cheaper ones) it works flawlessly on my desktop. We have infinity at it chomps up my 38mb download with ease 🙂

My guess would be a DNS / DHCP issue. If your flatmates laptop is working correctly it may be that he has his WiFi adapter set to use a specific DNS provider (possibly from an earlier ISP) and that the one specified on the router is playing up. If yours is set to get it from the router using DHCP then that may be the source of the problem. Ideally check his network adapter settings and make a note of them.

Take a look at the WiFi adapter settings on your laptop. Is it set to “Obtain DNS Server Address automatically”? – if so change it so that the preferred DNS server is 8.8.8.8 and the alternate server is 8.8.4.4 (Google’s Public DNS servers).