WIFI looses connection with AR9285 - have to disconnect / connect to regain internet?

I have a G73JW laptop using Ubuntu 12.04. It has an Atheros AR9285 card.

While wifi seems to work fine most of the time, about every hour or two it will loose the connection to the internet. The connection will appear to be connected still to the wireless router, but internet access is gone.

Disconnecting and reconnecting to the access point solves the problem, as does disabling and reenabling the adapter via the hardware keyboard shortcut.

How might this be solved so the connection is stable and doesn't drop?

EDIT: It looks like the network dropping isn't related to DNS as it fails either way:

codyloco@CodyLoco-Ubuntu:~$ dig askubuntu.com @8.8.8.8

; <<>> DiG 9.8.1-P1 <<>> askubuntu.com @8.8.8.8
;; global options: +cmd
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached
codyloco@CodyLoco-Ubuntu:~$ dig askubuntu.com

; <<>> DiG 9.8.1-P1 <<>> askubuntu.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

Again cycling (disabling / enabling) the adapter corrects the issue.

Solution 1:

I ran into comparable issues after I updated the configuration of my access point to "auto channel = ON": it checks the best wifi channel every X hours, and switches to it automatically.