FFXIV drops the internet connection briefly every 5 minutes or less

[Dynratygus]

Good morning and thank you for posting in the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

Are you connected to the router through wifi or through an Ethernet cable. Have any updates or changes been made do your network?

Thank you for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

[SonaEtwahl]

Thank you for the response. I think that I have actually fixed the issue. In case anyone else experiences something similar in the future, here's what I've discovered.

My router was set as a dual-bandwidth single-connection SSID, so both the 2.4 Ghz and 5.0 Ghz signals were shared by the same login name and password. While this is fine, in theory, since most devices only pick either 2.4 or 5.0 and stick with it, my computer's PCI-E adapter happens to automatically select the "better" connection, which is contingent on both signal strength and bandwidth allowance. This is obviously a problem that creeps up when you start running programs that use more than a tiny bit of your internet bandwidth.

What I noticed was that once the launcher was executed, the internet would disconnect. No surprise there. However, it was connecting to the 5.0 bandwidth and then trying to flip back to the 2.4 once that became the "better" connection again, causing constant 90ks and disconnections. To fix this, I just logged into my router using its IP address and standard login and separated both the 2.4 and 5.0 SSIDs to separate logins, which would disable the ability for my adapter to switch willy-nilly. I could probably also force my adapter to only accept one, but navigating that was a bit more convoluted, and none of my other devices have flipflopping capabilities.

I've had a steady connection ever since by just sticking with the 2.4 connection since it has a better signal for me being several rooms away from the router. Hopefully this helps someone else with a similar issue. Case (hopefully) closed!