touchy router

[#1]

I wonder if I should get a better router at the moment I have the BT Voyager 210, the first router I had when I signed up packed up after a month,I have noticed today that the internet light had dropped on two occasions and I was unable to connect,I checked and wiggled the wires leading to the router and switched the router off and on and all is well at the moment.

[#2]

This seems to be common theme with the Voyager 210.  I've swapped out a couple for friends with the same problem and replaced them with the Netgear DG843 which has resolved the problem of having to regularly power cycle the 210 to get a connection - the Netgears have been flawless so far. 
The way "Always On" operates on Voyagers also seems to be different to other routers - it pings the ISP regularly to stop an idle time out disconnection but it doesn't seem to reconnect if the connecion is lost which the Netgear and Draytek routers I've used do.
Of course, it could be that you've got a fault on your line and it wold be prudent to go through the diagnostics here and raising a fault if needs be. 
Can you borrow another router from someone for a while to check things out?

[#3]

sorry to butt in. paul since u have set a few dg843's up i would  like abit of info. now i set it up perfect wpa psk on, plus i have used the option to only allow my two wireless cards mac address to connect to the router.
frist prob is probally nothing its that when i came down this morning with both comps turned off i noticed the wireless light blinking every now and then is this norm plus with comps connected and disconnected the internet light blinks once every 7secs on the dot.
if it is some one hacking my wireless then they must be brainy people coz i set every thing up to the strongest i can with a long password even i might forget plus changed the admin password to stop the threat of people changing your dns settings. i couldnt put wpa2 psk on as i network my mac mini as a hard drive and it dosent like aec encpt only tkicp (not shaw if they r spelt right).
as to valarts question i had the 210 didnt have any probs apart from having to run a phone extension to it and my snr was rubish.
yestrday i blew the cob webs of my wallet and got the netgear dg843g v4 (£60 pc world)with the dongle  which is on the mac mini (had trouble with that and the mac had to download realtek driver).
any ways snr is a straight line in my snr monitor in the morings and night just slighty up and down which is why i bought it as they r well knowen for holding snr.
easy as pie to set up one click get isp settings then few tweaks to secure wireless.
it packaged as a dg111g when its bundeled with the usb wireless dongle

[#4]

The wireless light blinking is perfectly normal - it's probably just other PCs in the area scanning for a wireless connection. The wireless also broadcasts its presence every so often so your PC can find it!  Provided you've whitelisted your PCs and turned on encryption (WPA-PSK with TKIP will work for Xp machines, IIRC you need to get a patch from Microsoft for WPA2)you shouldn't have anything to worry about.  You can always keep an eye on your usage in the Menber Centre bearing in mind that there will be some usage shown even when you're not using the net (typically overnight you'll see about 200kb or so of usage) - this is just internet "noise" and, again, nothing to worry about.
As for the internet light flashing once every 7 seconds - never noticed, but then again I haven't looked for it!  You can always check the router status and logs in the router's configuration pages to see if there's anything untoward going on.  If there's been a drop in connection you'll see entries about CHAP authentication multiple times in the logs but once every 7 seconds is a bit too often so I wouldn't suspect that.  It's probably normal behaviour if your connection is stable.

[#5]

cheers paul mind at rest. i changed the channel from 11 down to 10 and that has sorted it must of bein interfence from sum source.
o and i manged to get the dmt tool to work with the dg843 v4 by turning on telnet on my vista machine and runing the debug command but on reboot of router it goes back to bts default snr for my line is they way to solve this probally not as the 210 had same prob and that wasnt surrported by dmt as well.

[#6]

I just thought I had to reply to say that after the internet light dropped 4 times on over the period of two days everthing is back to normal I have had no trouble from my router for the last 16 hours the problem happens when off line,I just wonder if it might be something to do with BT I have had this router for 4 months and this is the first time I have had this problem.

[#7]

by offline do u mean your p.c's r turned off. or that u have disconected the router from internet but router is still turned on?.
but the most likely thing that is happening is that your router is droping the connection to the exchange if this happens you will see the dsl light go red then start flashing green for few seconds then your internet light comes on.
you r probally just seeing the internet light part of it as thats about the time u go why isnt this web page working and then look at router and catch the internet light.
this is all normal if it has day of doing this but if its happens alot every day then theres a fault some where to find.
as i have said before i dumped the voyager 210 and got a netgear dg834g as im on a fairly long line(atten 53db) but with netgear it reports my line at 51db and my snr is rock solid. my line profile has now gone from 2mb to 3mb now its stable.

[#8]

When the internet light drops the pc is off and it never drops when I am online the dsl light never goes red the router must have had a bad day because my router has been ok for the last three days.I think I may get Netgear DG843 are they easy to set up.