Just wondering, whatever Fluther wizards are doing couldn't, couldn't possibly, be causing my router to crash out and go offline . . . could it?

Highly unlikely. More likely that your router is losing source signal (cable, dsl, whaever you use)

I’m sure fluther has nothing to do with it!

Check with your ISP.

It just happens to perfectly coincide.

We’ve blown through a router per year at out house. And the problems always start as lost signals. Crappy things but we need them.

(What router are you using? If it’s a Cisco or a LinkSys, go Google DDWRT, and download the right 3rd-party firmware. It’s extraordinary the difference that a sophisticated instruction set can make.)

@dpworkin westell model A90–750015-07 came with Verizon setup

Oh. It’s a piece of crap. My suggestion: by a LinkSys router in the $100 range (802.11N, two channel), use the Westel as a bridge (to get your dsl signal and set up your Internet connection, but not to Route) and after you load DDWRT on the LinkSys, use it as a router.

I had a nice linksys that I gave away because that was in place when I returned from [too complicated to explain] — but maybe verizon replaces it at n/c and probably w/another westell.
if I get a free new westell, is it worth the aggravation and cost to add a linksys?

Yes.

@dpworkin heard you :-)

I have to admit, our router is a Linksys running the Tomato firmware @dpworkin mentions, and it makes a world of difference. It has awesome features (such as an automatic dyndns updater, which means you can connect to your PC anywhere via the internet simply by using a “mycomputer.homeip.net” address [when you choose to set it up of course], very handy if you have a dynamic IP address), it has great reporting abilities so you know who is being the bandwidth hog at what time of the day, it lets you block off or limit that bandwidth hog, amongst many other things. Best of all, it’s rarely ever the cause of network problems (and when it is, it’s really just because of my modem not updating the IP address properly, so rebooting the router via its web interface solves the problem). It’s like having a really reliable bouncer at your front door, all the time.

@dynamicduo @dpworkin this actually sounds exciting. Am I being too geeky?

Personally, I happen to think it is cool beans, or I wouldn’t be promoting it.

@dpworkin :-)

only the shadow knows!

@BoBo1946 Whooahaahaahaa! [scary laugh]

loll..:-))

Hardly!

@perspicacious at first I thought there were some killer cookies being served up.
So who’s to know if you don’t ask?

@anartist, you are not crazy, it happened to me tot, when I logged on with Safari. I PMed Tim, and he fixed it. In order to log on with Safari, I was having the same issues that the MSN people were having, and needed to delete cookies to log on. Then I would time out in the middle of writing an answer, and in order to log back on, I would have to delete cookies again. Tim was able to fix the problem rather quickly.

@PandoraBoxx Thank you very much. My problem, though was more likely-router related. Although I did use my “Better Privacy” Firefox add-on to dump a bunch of cookies and that may have helped.