Problems with WiFi on Dell E6500 Laptop and D-Link DIR-615 Router – solved?

I’d been having problems with the WiFi between my Dell E6500 Laptop and Dell DIR-615 (a revD2 model, using Ralink chipset) supplied by Virgin Media, with VG1.00 firmware. The laptop would disconnect briefly every 20-30 seconds, reconnecting almost immediately. While the laptop and various programs were able to handle the short disconnection, it seemed to DOS the router – after 12-24 hours, the router would stop giving out IP addresses, and I would need to reset it.

This only happened with the Dell – we had another WinXP laptop, an iPhone, a Mac, and all these were perfectly stable.

Anyway – now that I’ve had time, I’ve downloaded and installed DD-WRT for my router, replacing the existing firmware with a much more powerful OS. One aim of this was to fix the disconnections, and indeed, it seems that the disconnection problems are solved. I also had VPN issues which meant our other laptop failed to connect to a corporate VPN, and that, also, seems to have been solved by enabling VPN passthrough in DD-WRT.

On the downside, my laptop connection seems to only negotiate at 26mbps up in the office, and not much better right next to the router; however, that’s less of an issue, so I’ll live with it for now. I also downloaded a copy of the D-Link firmware, so I can hopefully revert back, if I discover other issues.

The thread for installing DD-WRT to a DIR-615 D2 router is here. Be sure to allocate at least an hour reading all the how-to’s, conditions, and emergency recovery procedures – it’s not that easy.