Broken Networking

Lately I had been experiencing problems with my laptop wireless connection. For no obvious or apparent reason, the connection quits. Previously the connection had been stable.

This behavior started recently. I asked myself, “What did I do?”

There was a possibility of the router having problems, to which NetworkManager is designed to respond by killing the laptop wireless connection.

The laptop wireless connection terminated once or twice a day.

I was using the 5 MHz radio on the wireless. I discounted some kind of local interference.

This is not a DHCP issue because on my home LAN I use static IP addresses, even with NetworkManager.

Then I received another clue. While working on my office desktop all network functions stopped. This system uses a standard Slackware rc.inet1.conf to configure the network. No NetworkManager involved at all.

I checked the router. I noticed the time was incorrect by a few hours.

Because of the incorrect time I wondered whether the router was rebooting. Recently I configured the router to reboot at 3:05 AM nightly. Yet the time was not incorrect by 12 hours, just a couple of hours.

I rebooted the router. Again the time was incorrect. I changed the time zone and rebooted. That seemed to jar the firmware into showing the correct time. I restored the original time zone, changed the time server IP, and rebooted the router. The correct time held again.

Oddly, this seems to have resolved the recent slate of network problems. I have no clue about the actual root cause. I have no idea whether I caused the problem or something else.

Posted: Category: Usability Tagged: General

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