Been fighting this for about a week and I’m kinda out of ideas. Every 20–40 mins my desktop will basically lose internet for maybe 10–20 seconds. WiFi icon still shows connected, usually with full bars, then everything comes back like nothing happened.
What’s weird is the modem/router doesn’t reboot and none of the lights change. My phone seems mostly fine, although I don’t really notice a 10 sec drop when I’m just scrolling Reddit. On the PC it’s super obvious because Discord cuts out and whatever game I’m in starts screaming about packet loss.
Setup is:
Already restarted everything, updated the router firmware and reinstalled the WiFi driver. Speed tests look completely normal whenever the connection is behaving.
Is there a decent way to figure out the problem?
Next time it happens, have two pings running.
ping -t
and
ping 1.1.1.1 -t
If both crap out at the same time, look at WiFi/router. If the router ping stays clean but 1.1.1.1 dies, then start side-eyeing the modem/ISP.
Way more useful than running another speedtest after the problem is already gone lol
@Silent_Pulse Oh that’s stupidly simple, didn’t even think of doing both at once.
Just tried leaving them running and caught one drop. Router went from like 2–4 ms to a few timeouts, then recovered. 1.1.1.1 obviously died too.
So I guess Comcast is off the hook for once 
Yeah, that points pretty hard at the wireless side.
Don’t trust “full bars” too much either. Your signal can look perfectly decent while interference/retries are making the connection miserable.
I’d run something like NetSpot and just watch the network in Inspector while you’re using the PC. Check your RSSI, channel, neighboring networks and whether the signal suddenly moves around when the drops happen. You don’t even need to do a whole heatmap yet.
Could be something as dumb as another AP stomping all over the same channel.
AX210? Check Windows power management.
Also try locking the router to a different 5 GHz channel instead of leaving it on Auto for a night.
Had almost the exact same “connected but dead for 15 secs” nonsense in my apartment. Router kept deciding channel 149 was the promised land, meanwhile half the building apparently had the same idea.
Moved it and the problem basically vanished.