Wifi USB Adapter stops working intermittently

[Colin23erk]

the preious output error-ed with (  interface wlan0 not configured) so I tried rfkill list wlan  to see how the WLANs were listed but I am confused with the output as it does not use (  wlan0  etc  )

Code:

colin@colin-NC110:~$ rfkill list wlan
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
2: samsung-wlan: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
4: phy1: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
colin@colin-NC110:~$

Item 4 is the dongle - If I unplug /plug it in the item number and the phy number steps up one

Does this shed any light why the command fails or am I looking for the wrong items