Following up on yesterday's post about my broken wireless network, here's what I've been through in the last few days. Last week sometime, for no apparent reason, my internet connection went all strange. Not not there, just intermittent. This was restricted to computers on the network that used the wireless bridge and laptops using just the WAP were fine.

The fact that the network had been fine since I set it up a week before led me to suspect problems with my ISP. That didn't explain why access without using the bridge was okay though. It had to be the network somewhere.

Where should I start? I tried everything. Starting with powering everything off and back on again. Twice. I reset all WAPs to their factory default settings. I turned WEP on and off. I reset WEP passphrases. Nothing seemed to make any difference. So I gave up and resolved no to use laptops until I could be bothered to get round to working it out.

Then, two days ago, I sat down with the determination to get it sorted. The first obstacle was that the USB connection to the laptop from the WAP was unhappy. Nine out of ten attempts to connect would fail with the message "No DFU driver has been loaded yet". Turning the WAP on and off a few times would often fix this but not for long enough to make any changes. The only breakthrough I had was when I switched the open WAP to be the downstairs bridge connection. The network now had fully functioning internet connection. The problem must be with the other downstairs WAP. After a few attempts at getting a USB connection to it I though I would pay the Netgear Support site a visit. They had a document matching my problem but the Answer was less than useless. Typical support quality. Next I rang them only to be put in a queue with an estimated wait of 19 minutes. No chance!

What I should have done was Google! Can't remember my exact search but I soon found somebody else who had blogged about the same problem and had found the solution. I had two WAPs that were the same model but one was different in that it had a different power rating. One of them wanted 800mA the other a whole Ampere. I can safely say that would have been the last thing I would have thought of.

You would think that the solution would be a quick switch of power supplies from one to the other. Oh now, not that easy. From what I can tell, the WAP that requires 800mA and has been feeding quite happily on 1A is now getting greedy and refused to behave with a meagre 800mA. Looks like I need either a) A new power adapter or b) A new WAP. All I know is that there's no way I am going to pay for it. Netgear Customer Services are my next port of call.

Sorry about the long post. Just had to get it off my chest. I also want to thank Martin Little for his post. Looks like I've found a new blog to read. He's got some snazzy features on it like blogging from his camera phone. I also want to double the chance of the next person searching Google to find this answer. And now I am off to "Old" York for the weekend....