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Weird Router Issue Hoping someone has seen before

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questorfla:
This is pretty specific and while I have seen just about everything this one has me stumped.  The network layout itself would be hard to even describe but if that is the problem it has been the same for 8 years and never had as issue like this till now.
We are using a Linksys model AC1900 (I think it is the high end AC unit only a few months old)  The router is set to use a "private sub of 10.0.50.xx".  The router is set for WPA. 

The office it is in has connections where people use wired when they think about it and wireless when in a hurry.  Almost every system is a laptop.  In most case they are always plugged in (and while it annoys me that it does so) almost every one of them will always connect (Windows default unless overridden) to Both the wired and the Wi-Fi.

Again, it has been doing this for many years, through different router and different ISP's and no problems till lately.  (by that maybe 2 or 3 months tops).  I am on one of these laptops right now and this is the issue:

Windows is showing the Wired connection being down.  At the same time, this user also said they had no internet.  This was true and windows showed such.  However, I was able to get the Wi-Fi to work by doing the following:  Unplug the wired adaptor.  Nothing changed.  This happened while nothing was being done.  The wire goes to a connector and direct to the router.  The Wi-Fi signal is the only one also coming direct from the router.  Plugging the wire back in immediately kills the wife's ability to connect to the net.  But it does not disconnect the signal or show anything other than Windows saying it is "unable to determine the problem"

Initially we thought it was the ISP.  We had their network techs out yesterday.  He gave a pass on the whole setup and at the time, of course, there was nothing to show. It was all up and running.

The Wi-Fi is a Ralink device if that matters on Windows 7x64.  This is a recurrent issue that intuition says is the router but as for the logic to back-up that guess I have no idea.

I am about to try switching it anyway to one of the new Netgear Nighthawks but I was wondering if there were any Wi-Fi Experts inhere with a reason for this behavior.  This is not the only laptop that has exhibited this.  Worse, in some cases, people have found the exact opposite.  That disabling the Wi-Fi makes the wired start working.  No changes in anything, just use the windows control panel to disable the wireless.

90& of the time, almost every system in here is connected to Both with no problems.  The 10% that are left...
We have done a full power cycle on all components and the issue, when here, stays until.. it stops.  Might be an hour or whenever.
I hate to make this any longer but the one final detail that makes this a real mystery is that on a few occasions,  Every System in here fails and when that happens Windows reports unable to contact primary DNS server.  That was why we called the ISP.  Even during the times when we are unable to connect to the primary dns, the ISP shows we are up with no problems and nothing they can find shows any issues with their DNS.

OK.  That is my question for the weekend.  What  might be the reason  (PS, We just had the whole office network setup re-wired just in case.  No change. Same problems.  New router, New Switches, new cables.  Same Old Problem.
Many thanks for any Input  I am sure someone else has to have seen something like this somewhere.

Stoic Joker:
You're only supposed to have one default gateway. But with the configuration you describe you actually have two different default gateways identified as the same target. This configuration is not supposed to work.

We have several HP AIOs at the office that are connected to the internal Gb wired network, but also have built in wireless adapters. Every now and then one of them (through no fault of the user... {Ha!}) will end up with a running wireless connection, and a bunch of connection issues.

Point being...just because Windows has gotten better at compensating for this rather typical configuration booboo it doesn't mean it's supposed ever to happen, or the right way to do something.

BGM:
Are you using DHCP?  Each laptop has a different MAC address for it's wired card and for its wireless card.  You have to enter both addresses in your DHCP configuration.

40hz:
A couple of things:

1) Check your subnet mask setting. Although you're on a 10.x.x.x network (which implies a /8), you're only using 10.0.50.x (which makes it effectively a /24 network) so your subnet mask should be set to 255.255.255.0.

2) I've seen many consumer/SOHO grade routers where their DHCP server has trouble with anything other than the 192.168.x.x range of addresses. If you don't need the huge address space a 10.x.x.x/8 network provides, use 192.168.x.x/24 for your address range.

3) SJ's note about the default gateway is super important. Run an ipconfig /all on any machine that's having a problem and see if they're picking up a strange gateway.

4) Don't always trust your wiring if you're in a shared office space. I went bonkers for about three hours trying to run down a network connectivity issue at one of my client's offices. Some client machines could get the web, but suddenly could not see the servers. Turned out their telco people had installed a router over the weekend for their new VoIP phones and commandeered some of the existing network wiring so that the router I thought some of my user's PCs were connecting to was the telco's rather than theirs. Having the exact same address on the box plus the same DNS entries and DHCP scope served from both routers hid the culprit pretty effectively. It wasn't until I noticed two PCs had the exact same IP address (and the network hadn't crashed) that I realized what was up. Changing the router configuration and DHCP scope confirmed my suspicions. That didn't fix the actual wiring, which needed to be redone. But at least it identified who screwed it up.

Ath:
I've seen similar, intermittent, connection issues when I bought a new Linksys (ea6700) AC router. It was cured after I replaced it with a Netgear aparatus, as the ea6700 was originally bought with the intention to fix connection-issues we had with a Linksys wrt160...
Not even bios updates have yet been able to cure the intermittent wi-fi connection issues with the ea6700 (that is still here, being used in my tech-testing network, not directly connected to the interwebs)

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