Home router bork - NOT Broadcom STA (wl) or LMDE [RESOLVED]

[MiniT]

EDIT: RESOLVED, basically. See my second post, was not the driver or system.
Will make a hardware specific thread or post where appropriate.

Help! Wireless and home network issues: weird outages or resets.
Seems that the router resets all connections (?) or just stops communicating temporarily.
Is this maybe due to me goofing with my wifi driver?

Machine is a Dell Inspiron Mini 1012
It's Wifi card shows as a Broadcom 4312b/g usually,
but sometimes as Broadcom 4315 LP-PHY, only when using the LPPHY driver.
That incorrect read by LPPHY driver is known issue.
OS is LMDE with recent image and current updates - 3.0 kernel.
The wireless AP is a cheap home NetGear, with other wifi devices sometimes used,
and always has a big Mac computer plugged into it. Time Warner services.

Maybe the problem is the Wifi driver on my netbook?
Maybe it is TimeWarner or someone's Mac product in our house?

Having installed LMDE 32-bit in place of Mint Gnome 10, I saw that sometimes our whole house internet would kick off, or just the wireless.
Could be coincidence, as with holidays, much family is using the network.

I first thought it was just my netbook having a problem, so I changed from the suggested Broadcom LP-PHY driver (had problems with that in other OS) to Broadcom STA (wl) from Mint's LMDE repos. Followed Sticky HOWTO(same as community page), but used default LMDE repos since they have the packages required, no need to add additional repos(?).

I had Broadcom STA (wl) from Mint Gnome (Ubuntu) repos on this machine without issue on previous installation.

Unfortunately, with LMDE and this driver, it seems to be unpredictably dropping out?
Again, this could be Time Warner having seasonal overload or repairs, could be Mac products.
I am lost as to where to look for a solution, but since I'm the computer nerd in the family, it must be my fault, right?

Thanks in advance for your help.
Yea GNU/Linux! Yea LMDE!

mini

[xircon]

If I download a torrent my internet connection (Sky Broadband UK, Sky supplied wireless router - Netgear I think), everything grinds to a halt, is anyone using the network really heavily? I set things going over night to stop my girlfriend whingeing

If I restrict Transmission to 50k up/down, she tends not to notice, but its too slooooow for downloading an ISO. We had the same problem on Virgin Cable, I think the router just gets flooded by all the connections

[MiniT]

Eeerrmm.
Maybe it is a matter of too much glut on limited bandwidth.
Of course I asked if anyone was using streaming video or other resource heavy applications.
And, of course, the answer was NO.
Family.

This has happened since some Wifi users have left the house, so I am still wondering.
It has also been the case when someone got up early in the morning and tried to connect.

If I assume it is a problem with the commercial service letting us down, how can I be sure it is not some conflict in the house, my equipment/software, or interference from new neighbors' Wifi mixing in?

Should I contact the ISP for recent connectivity issues,
make sure our router is running on a not-so-common frequency,
and see what happens?

What gets me, and seems to point away from my netbook/system, is the fact that it doesn't just happen everytime I (dis)connect. It does not follow from anything I'm doing per se.
Hell, I've even used a Bittorrent client to down iso.s and files from great places like VODO.net at pretty high speeds without causing problems. Maybe it is the ISP? I know that if I log firewall BLOCKs, I get all kinds of strange IPs trying to conect to Bittorrent range ports. I don't even look for that anymore, it is so steady. That's what firewall's are for.

Anyway, thanks for your quick reply, and I'll keep an eye out for more.
Don't want the family kicking me off their network. That would be tragic!

Maybe I'll follow my logic above, and maybe I'll chip in for more bandwidth.

mini

EDIT: No problem in a couple days. Don't know the exact cause, and that troubles me.
BUT, it is not continuing and there seems no damage anywhere, so that will have to do.
CHANGED TO RESOLVED.