Firefox and Wireless Router?

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Firefox and Wireless Router?

Post by Guest »

This is a big coincidence possibly but it has happened too many times now. I thought my DLink wireless Router was going bad. I would be surfing the net on Firefox and all of a sudden, no connection. This was happening on and off and I decided to get a new router. This time a Netgear. It is happening again. Not all the time though. The last couple of days it has been horrible. This morning it happened. I got out of Firefox and started Chrome and it worked fine. I got out of Chrome and went back to Firefox and after a couple of minutes, the internet was down again. I connected right up to the cable modem and no problem. Went back through the router and using Firefox, internet went down. HELP!!
VanillaMozilla
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Re: Firefox and Wireless Router?

Post by VanillaMozilla »

As far as I know, it has nothing to do with Firefox. Firefox does not maintain a connection for you, and is not responsible for your Internet connection in any way. More than likely, there's something wrong with your network environment -- either a bad line or incorrect modem or router setup. There are some possible reasons for a difference between browsers. For example, is one set to use a proxy? Is one set up to dial up automatically? Or just coincidence?

I have no idea in your case, and I'm not going to try to troubleshoot it for you, but I recently had a somewhat similar experience. My connection had been flawless for years and suddenly began to fail intermittently. I traced the problem to the modem, or so I thought, and bought a new modem. It turns out that there was nothing wrong with the equipment. I just had to set up the modem in bridge mode (i.e. bypass many of its functions). NO change on my side, NO equipment malfunction, and AT&T claims they made no changes; nevertheless the connection that worked for years conked out.

EDIT: Look here and in following messages for another possible explanation: viewtopic.php?p=10624307#p10624307 .
Last edited by VanillaMozilla on April 1st, 2011, 7:58 am, edited 2 times in total.
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BruceAWittmeier
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Re: Firefox and Wireless Router?

Post by BruceAWittmeier »

Same description of problems I had at the end of 2010. I thought it was the router as that is what I had to constantly reset when I lost a connection. Seemed like many steps of troubleshooting helped, but it is back off and on again. It was never completely resolved, I just kept pushing forward.

I know there was a problem back Nov/Dec 2010 where the browser was having connectivity issues as there was a bug/ticket placed. I dont recall the number, but could find it if it would help.

I use my desktop hard wired thru the router and would eliminate it, but it is needed daily for a friend with a laptop.

VanillaMozilla - what is your situation now? It must be working - what did you do? You seem to have options I dont know about with the modem.
I often take a long windy road to my destination. Upon arrival, I wonder how I missed the shortcut.
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Re: Firefox and Wireless Router?

Post by Guest »

Do a Google Search and you will see many articles about it having to do with Firefox and they give a few fixes for it.
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RobertJ
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Re: Firefox and Wireless Router?

Post by RobertJ »

Browser has nothing to do with maintaining a connection. And for the Troll from Burlington, Mass.,
This is issue is very common. If you do a search on the internet, you will find many pages about this.

that is pure nonsense. You can search this forum and others and will find nothing browser specific. That is because your computer maintains the connection and not the browser. That is why you can have multiple applications connected to the Internet at the same time (e.g., multiple browsers, email client, Google Notifier, FTP client, .......)

I suggest as did VanillaMozilla that the issue is with your network setup.

.
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stevejay1761
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Re: Firefox and Wireless Router?

Post by stevejay1761 »

It really is a coincidence that this happens with Firefox and not with IE or Chrome. I am not saying that Firefox is the problem but when using the Firefox browser, we lose the internet connection when going through a wireless router. Yet, using Chrome or IE on these same sites, the same wireless modem, there are no connection problems. On a computer that goes directly to the modem, there are no issues with Firefox. Very Interesting!!
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Re: Firefox and Wireless Router?

Post by RobertJ »

stevejay1761 wrote:It really is a coincidence that this happens with Firefox and not with IE or Chrome. I am not saying that Firefox is the problem but when using the Firefox browser, we lose the internet connection when going through a wireless router. Yet, using Chrome or IE on these same sites, the same wireless modem, there are no connection problems. On a computer that goes directly to the modem, there are no issues with Firefox. Very Interesting!!


Certainly is. My Mac Pro is hard wired into our LAN switch which is in turn connected to our router and then cable modem. I have a WAP plugged into the network (Cisco WAP54G) for my wife who has a MacBook Pro notebook and connects wirelessly. We have been using FF since V1.0 and never have had a problem. My wife used it both on the MacBook Pro and an iBook since 2006 with two different WAP's (The first was a 802.11b as I recall).

Question. My wife and normally have two or three application connected to the Internet at the same time. In my case FF, Thunderbird and Gmail Notifier and with my wife wirelessly FF and Thunderbird. If you are running multiple app's simultaneously when you loose the FF connection do you loose all of them or just FF?
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VanillaMozilla
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Re: Firefox and Wireless Router?

Post by VanillaMozilla »

BruceAWittmeier wrote:VanillaMozilla - what is your situation now? It must be working - what did you do? You seem to have options I dont know about with the modem.

Everything works perfectly. I just followed the directions. Through a roundabout Google search I found setup directions for my modem and router buried deeply in the AT&T Web site. The AT&T modem now acts as just a dumb conduit for data, leaving the Linksys router to maintain the connection. It's called "bridge mode".

EDIT: Also see James' posts below!

Concerning Firefox settings, you can check
Tools > options > advanced > network (defaults are usually best)

or if you are using a stone-age, dialup modem, read this:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Autoconnect
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.autod ... er.enabled

Otherwise, I have to wonder, how did you determine that you had lost the Internet connection?
Last edited by VanillaMozilla on March 31st, 2011, 6:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
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James
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Re: Firefox and Wireless Router?

Post by James »

Do make sure that Firefox has not gone offline in File->Work offline due to any erratic network status.

Also may help.
Just type about:config in location (address) bar
Right-click on the about:config page to open the right-click context menu and use "New > Boolean" to create a new Boolean pref.
Name: network.manage-offline-status
Value: false

You only need to add this Preference if using Firefox 3.6.* or 3.5.* as it is already there in Firefox 4.0 and just right-click and Toggle it to false if not already.
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Re: Firefox and Wireless Router?

Post by VanillaMozilla »

James, what the heck is that, and what would change it, except for extensions or monkey fingers? It's not documented in the KB.
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Re: Firefox and Wireless Router?

Post by James »

VanillaMozilla wrote:James, what the heck is that, and what would change it, except for extensions or monkey fingers? It's not documented in the KB.

Just thinking that if the users were having some connection issues, it could set Firefox to work offline. There were a couple of Extensions to overide that before the preference was there by default in 4.0. If above users are using Firefox 4.0 then this should not be a issue, however if any are using 3.6.* and earlier they should toggle the network.manage-offline-status to false anyways. The OP and stevejay1761 are posting with Chrome so the Firefox version is unkown.

This preference does what these extensions did.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... line-mana/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... nlinemode/

For reading and not commenting in as Bugzilla is not a forum.
Bug 620472 - "Work offline" shouldn't be managed by Firefox, only by the user
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Re: Firefox and Wireless Router?

Post by VanillaMozilla »

And according to the description of the first extension, "Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 will automatically set itself into "Work offline" mode if it detects that the network is no longer available." That's WAY too fancy. It would affect wireless users in particular, and people who are connected directly to a modem with a flaky phone line. That may explain a LOT of support requests that we have seen. Just amazing.

The Knowledge Base is down right now. Kerz? I can't check whether this is mentioned at all, but I can verify that there's nothing on the new about:config setting.

Do you know if any thought was ever given to alternatives? This offline mode was invented to allow working locally, but surely it's not necessary to sever the connection to allow access to the local computer?!!

EDIT: It's a feature, but for some reason it doesn't work right on some computers.
Last edited by VanillaMozilla on April 1st, 2011, 7:59 am, edited 2 times in total.
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RobertJ
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Re: Firefox and Wireless Router?

Post by RobertJ »

In my Googling on this I found this

Mozilla Suport wrote:Create a new Boolean pref with the name network.manage-offline-status and set the value to false.
Right-click on the about:config page to open the right-click context menu and use "New > Boolean" to create a new Boolean pref.

Name: network.manage-offline-status
Value: false


.
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James
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Re: Firefox and Wireless Router?

Post by James »

VanillaMozilla wrote:And according to the description of the first extension, "Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 will automatically set itself into "Work offline" mode if it detects that the network is no longer available." That's WAY too fancy. It would affect wireless users in particular, and people who are connected directly to a modem with a flaky phone line. That may explain a LOT of support requests that we have seen. Just amazing.

Do you know if any thought was ever given to alternatives? This offline mode was invented to allow working locally, but surely it's not necessary to sever the connection to allow access to the local computer?!!

This network.manage-offline-status is not only a default preference in Firefox 4.0 now but also set to false by default thankfully. I did link to one of the related bugs and to me it was one of those whoops situations with it being enabled by default and users needing install one of those Extensions or add the preference to disable it.

RobertJ wrote:In my Googling on this I found this

Mozilla Suport wrote:Create a new Boolean pref with the name network.manage-offline-status and set the value to false.
Right-click on the about:config page to open the right-click context menu and use "New > Boolean" to create a new Boolean pref.

Name: network.manage-offline-status
Value: false

Mentioned that in my second post. You only actually need to manually add the Preference (or install one of two extensions) if using Firefox 3.5 or 3.6.
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Re: Firefox and Wireless Router?

Post by VanillaMozilla »

OK, the Knowledge Base now has a new section in "Error loading Websites" and a new entry in "about:config entries". Good catch, James.

According to the bug report, Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 are supposed to go into offline mode automatically if there is no connection. This is a feature, but some operating systems it doesn't go back online when the connection is reestablished. This is not a problem on all systems. For example, my Firefox 3.6 under Ubuntu Linux puts itself back into online mode as soon as the connection is reestablished. This problem is supposed to be fixed for Firefox 4.

By the way, support.mozilla.com is really screwed up on this. If you search for "work offline" you will come up short. It even pops up a hint "network.manage-offline-mode", but the hits are not relevant.
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