Why does my mesh router drop my work laptop during video calls?

[Madison_J]

My new mesh router keeps dropping the connection to my work laptop, but everything else in the house stays online. I’ve tried moving the laptop closer to a node and updating the network drivers, but the disconnects still happen right in the middle of video calls.

[EvelynW]

That sounds exactly like what I ran into last month. The rest of the house stayed online, but the laptop would drop in the middle of calls for about 10 to 20 seconds and then reconnect. I tried a few things and finally found that disabling the wireless power saving on the laptop helped a little, and I also set the adapter to a higher performance mode in the driver settings. Still not perfect, but it stopped some of the drops.

[LukeST]

Do you think maybe the real problem isn't the mesh at all but something on the laptop like a VPN client or conferencing app misbehaving when it tries to stay connected?

[GraceJ]

I swapped to a different DNS and limited background apps, and the drops kept happening only during calls. It feels random, like the video stream starts and the connection hiccups for a moment.

[Ronald59]

I even tried moving the laptop to a different room, and the cat walked across the desk and the screen froze—okay probably not, but it did make me wonder if little things around you create tiny network hiccups that you notice only during video.