"Can you elaborate on what a "drop out" means? Does your laptop become
unassociated,
not receive any traffic from the AP, have you tried enabling
broadcast
of your SSID and checking to see
if it is visible during these
times?"
Thanks for your helpful questions.
These are mostly brief interruptions in the data stream while the laptop maintains its association. A bubble often comes up with a message "You are now connected to the internet" or something similar once it's reestablished a connection (running Win XP right now.)
I just noticed key renewal is set for 3600 seconds so I don't think that's the issue (these dropouts can occur more frequently than once an hour). (What do you set your key renewal value to?)
The laptop became unassociated with the longer dropouts and the SSID disappeared from the available list. Reboot seemed to solve the issue on these few occasions (which might point to the laptop, although as I said before, there have been no connection issues at other sites like the library or coffee shop where there is no encryption).
Concerning DD-WRT: it was my intention to experiment with this or Tomato, hence the choice of the 54GL Linksys. But I don't want to go there if the router needs to be returned as defective. Not looking forward to the possibility of bricking it while flashing anyway.
2) I was looking for an indication of general sentiment on the UPC: thumbs up/down, worth getting an $80 battery? It was an intangible purchase that I'm revisiting now with the low battery.
I could try to run it with a low battery and unplug the beeper and hope to still benefit from cleaner power during voltage drops. The unit was never relied upon to keep the system running during extended outages, although it did do this on occasion. But I assume voltage spike protection from the UPS is no better than a good surge protector, which I am using now.
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