Unusual Internet Connection Problem

[Bad Neighbour]

I'm having one of the most weird and annoying connection problems with my net at home atm and was wondering if anyone here knew how to sort it out or where I can go to ask about it..

I have a ZyXEL wireless internet router thing on AOL (I didn't choose it, believe me) which I'm connecting to through a Medion MD 96290 Laptop running Vista Home Premium service pack 1, with intel dual core and a bunch of other similarly bad choices.

Whats happening is, from when I connect for the first time, exactly every half hour I disconnect from the wireless. The wireless isn't going off - it's still there on the networks list, but I just disconnct for no apparent reason, EXACTLY every 30 minutes. It'll reconnect, usually manually, anywhere from within 5 secs to as long as 10 minutes, usually giving me messages about failures due to timeouts. It's bizarre and really annoying while trying to play WoW/Diablo/whatever or talking on msn, but it's such a controlled problem there must be a way to fix it.

Any ideas?

 

[New Troll]

Is your connection secured? Sounds like you're getting outside interferance. I get the same thing whenever I turn on my PS3 and 360.

Could also be an issue with your host. Might contact AOL and make sure they have you set up as using a router.

 

[Bad Neighbour]

Yeah its secured. Do you mean it might be trying to connect to other networks around?

 

[New Troll]

No. I use to have a similar issue while living across from a school. My network was unsecured so every thirty minutes the school's network would find mine and turn it off for security reasons. It didn't know my network wasn't part of it's.

Now my network is secure, but I do still get disconncted on one of my computers whenever my PS3 and sometimes my 360 first connects to the network.

But then, usually about once every six months, my whole network will just seem to shut itself down every so often. Usually within thirty minutes. Took me and my host awhile to figure out, but it seems they have some configuring on thier end which influences my connectivity due to using a router. Whenever they reset thier servers, it sets my personal options back to default and so they have to go back in and set me back up again.