Over the past 1.5 years, I've spent a large amount on wireless equipment. It all started when I had to move my primary desktop to the basement, while the only internet hookup remained on my uppermost floor (I live in a two story home.)
No matter I thought, and I ran out and bought the cheapest wireless G add-in card and router I could find. That was my first mistake. The first card was a DWA-542 (Wireless G) and the router was a WBR-2310. This setup worked well for a while, but the signal started dropping about 4-6 months in, and progressively got worse. Usually to fix it, I had to run up two flights of stairs, restart the router and it would work again for about 20mins - the whole day.
Fed up, I decided it was the wireless card. I then went out and bought a Linksys WMP54G. This did little to solve the problem and I bit the bullet and went for a wireless N router (DIR-615) with a wireless G+ card (name escapes me ATM, but it was a Dlink wireless G "gold" card of sorts.)
And that is my current setup. It has served me well for almost a year, until about 2 months ago, the signal started dropping and I'm back to the old resetting game.
But why? I was under the impression either a router worked or it didn't, non of this 'slow death' none-sense. Am I doing something wrong? I would be concerned about having a wireless G+ card, except restarting the router always fixes the problem...
Please weigh-in! To detail the problem further, the router is always visible in Windows 7 wireless manager, but when I tell it to connect, Windows says it can't, then I tell it to figure out why and it tells me it doesn't know. Grrr