I was losing internet every day at midnight and it was getting very frustrating. (Especially when I kept getting disconnected during a Raid). As a matter of fact all the computers on the network were losing the internet connection at the same time. Which led me to believe that it was a problem with my Internet Service Provider. I called my ISP (Cablevision) and they verified that everything on their end was fine. Just to make sure it was not my end I connected a PC directly to the cable modem, bypassing the router, and I did not have the problem. I then directed my efforts at my Linksys WRT54G Wireless router. I could not find any settings that suggested a midnight outage. After adjusting many settings, updating firmware, and resetting to factory defaults I was still getting the issue.

As part of my troubleshooting I was running a continuous ping to the google.com and the router address. The command in Windows is “ping IP_Address -t”. I noticed I would drop packets to both the internet and my router. I was using DHCP to get my address from the router. When I gave myself a static address, I did not have the issue. I knew I was dealing with a DHCP issue.

In my Linksys router I found a setting under Setup -> Network Address Server Settings (DHCP) called Client Lease time. There is a decription next to this setting that says “0 means one day”. This is the default. It turns out that my IP addess was being renewed every 24 hours at midnight. I change the setting to 1800 minutes (about a day and a half) and I no longer disconnect at midnight. Another fix to this issue to assign a static IP address to your workstation.