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I first noticed that the wireless connection was dropping more frequently than usual when watching a lot of videos on YouTube, and the HTML5 player was "unloading" in favor of the Flash player which was undesirable. However, it was nigh impossible to diagnose that issue when the network connection is unreliable.

The above problem started probably earlier than last weekend, but I had other things to occupy my attention and did not focus too closely. I was taking a bit of a vacation at home to do things around the apartment, and yet I mostly just watched videos.. until the connection got choppy.

Frustrated, I messed around on my router, an Asus RT-N66U with Tomato 1.28 USB. I use the 2.4 GHz channel 4, with WPA2, and do not broadcast the SSID. As part of my attempts, I did enable the 5 GHz band, but that did not resolve the problem, since it appears that my laptop refuses to play in that band. It is now disabled, but the issue remains.

The laptop in use, an Asus X501A, first exhibited the symptoms on Ubuntu 14.10 running Firefox 37 with NoScript. I imagined that upgrading to 15.04 with Firefox 39 in tow might fix the problem. Alas, it did not.

I also sometimes bring my work laptop, an Asus GWV55, if I am not mistaken, home to work (or play simple games), and that runs Windows 7 Professional SP1 and nearly all latest updates. I do not recall having any connection issues while playing games prior to last weekend, but I did not make use of the work laptop much during the time I observed the connection drops on the personal laptop. Therefore, please keep in mind that it is possible that the router configuration was not put back to the exact same state it was prior to the issues observed, however, I have not done much to alter the configuration.

Also note that the laptops and the router are on virtually the opposing corners of my one floor apartment, but it is a two story apartment building. When connected, the "bars" are usually 80% or higher, so I do not think signal strength is a major factor. That being stated, it IS an apartment building, and I do notice higher lag towards middle evening hours. That is lag though, and even when it was really bad, I used to not lose the connection.

As part of my attempts to fix this issue from the router side, based on research here and other locations, I have ensured that I am only using WPA2 and not mixed WPA/WPA2, WMM is disabled, and I also bumped the router transmit power from 42 mW to 60 mW. The number of leases total available is 8 across all interfaces, wireless or not (an old configuration setting), with 1 day lease times. I have yet to see more that 4 active or expiring leases the entire time I have owned the router, and all are devices under my direct control.

By the way, I am writing this from my phone, because the connection would not resume. It just will not reconnect, or if it did, 5 minutes would be were I would put the time interval in which I would anticipate the connection would get dropped again.

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http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2244010

Turns out WMM was turned off in the router. I know that was one of the settings I disabled, not thinking I'd ever need it. Apparently, 'nix platforms actually require it to be set, while Windows 7 and Android 4.4.4 do not. According to the link, neither does Apple OS X.

This was an annoying situation to go through, since the other devices that I have access to for debugging all worked and thus made me think it was the Ubuntu platform, when instead it was me messing around with my router. Such an unforgiving platform sometimes.

I like it.

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