"Waiting for the network" what??

[Staren]

Ok here is what's going on. I have a netgear gateway (cable modem / wireless router combo), and a wireless laptop (one in my sig). They have been playing nice for months, but tonight I started having problems. A few times today my connection speed would drop from 11.0 mbps to 1.0 mbps. I figured 'ok it's dropping the link' and unplugging the gateway and letting it reset fixed the problem. Then about an hour ago it drops out all the way, to the point where I had to refresh the network list 4 times before it found the network again. Well now it finds the network no problem (signal is at five bars, and the two divices are like 7 steps and one wall apart btw), BUT it doesn't want to link. As I said it finds the network no problem, but when I click connect it just sits on "Waiting for the network" and then gives up after a few minutes.

First thing I did is disable WEP so right now it's an open network.
I did add a new port forworder this morning, but that's it.
No MAC filtering is active at all.
No port blocking.
Gateway has been reset (power pulled, not set back to factory defaults)
Laptop has been restarted 3 times.
It's just the wireless. The computer I'm writing this on is on the same network via ethernet.

I'm out of ideas here. Does someone with more networking experence have any ideas?

[glc]

Yep. Get rid of your 2.4 GHz cordless phones.

[Staren]

Wish that was it, but nope. I switched all the phones in this house to 900mhz hand sets too avoid that kind of problem last year. Unless it's next door I don't think that's it.

[Staren]

Well new update in this. After trying to get on the network for awhile, my laptop is now finding the network everytime, but only about 1 in 8 tries will get me on. It will then connect at 11.0 mbps for a few minutes and then drop to 1.0 mbps. The last time I tried it, I was given the message "no or limited connectivity" Reason given was that the network did not give my computer an IP address. I thought it might be a problem with my laptop, but I'm thinking router problem after that...

Update - Was able to finish the windows Repair for wireless connections. After that it connected to the normal speed for a few minutes. I downloaded my e-mail to test the real world speed and it worked fine, then a minute or so later it dropped to 2.0 mbps then 1.0 mbps again and sat there. I've never seen anything like this. Tomarow I'm going to try it with a diffrent wireless computer and see if I can eleminate the laptop as having the problem.

[glc]

Being that it's a Netgear, it may be time for a firmware update and a hard reset/reconfiguration.

[Staren]

Thanks for the replies and reading while I try to figure this out. Found this on the model I have:

--------------------------
CG814WG or CG814WT or CG814WCOM
Cable Modem Gateway

For support and information, contact the company you purchased the product from. After you have done that, other potentially useful information is below.

These models must use the firmware from the vendor. Do not use other firmware.

If you are not the original owner and cannot get support from the vendor, the NETGEAR product on this site closest in function is CG814M.
-----------------------------------

Guess I just have to see if I can get Road Runner to send a tech out (and give me a better model gateway). If I'm lucky perhaps I can get a wireless G box out of this.

[glc]

Why don't you just get them to give you a standard cable modem and go buy your own router?

[Staren]

I didn't do that when we had this set-up about 4 years ago because I was just learning to build systems, and wouldn't dare mess with a network at the time. I have a tech from Road Runner coming out tomarow, and that's what I think I'm going to do, just get a modem from them and get a normal router.