wifi connection keeps dropping, old laptop Linux Mint
 

I have recycled an old laptop to run Linux Mint, we use it almost exclusively to listen to music (YT) and Radio listen again. It seems to have no trouble keeping up with streaming audio or video programmes except it randomly loses connection with the wifi. Thinking this issue might be software related I installed a newer version of Mint, the cut down version that puts the least load on the machine hardware. It has made no difference, the machine still loses wifi connection as randomly as before.

When the wifi connection drops the machine still keeps everything else working. It will still play media from the download directory, open OpenOffice documents etc. The only way I have found to recover from the wifi dropping out is to reboot the machine.

Help. Ideally I would like to stop the dropping out but failing that, is there a way to kick start the wifi without rebooting the machine?

Thanks,

Rans6...............

If you know the WiFi driver kernel module then you can stop and reload it using modprobe.

...but I'd look into whether it's the right driver and/or something in the tcp stack dying.