Can you help me with my internet?

Need some troubleshooting help.

It started a couple months ago. My desktop would not be able to connect to web pages, saying that "this connection has been reset." It would load web pages but you would have to refresh a couple of times and would load slowly. This would happen intermittently and my two other laptops would work perfectly on the network, wired and wireless.

About two weeks ago this started happening to all of the computers on my network. Web pages sometimes do not want to load or take forever to do so. They say either connection has timed out or that the connection has been reset.

I have two xp pro machines and a vista premium.

The router is a linksys wrt54gs v1.

So far I tried resetting the router and the modem.
static/dynamic Ip addresses
changing the routers firmware to dd-wrt
I know that it is not a hardware issue or driver issue on the computers

My internet works sometimes, sometimes it doesn't which wasnt the case a few weeks ago.

Could it be that the router is dying?

 

I would say it sounds like the router is dying. I'm having the same problem right now. Next time this happens, open up a command prompt and try to ping your router (unless you've changed the IP address of the router, just type "ping 192.168.1.1) and see if you get any timeouts. There are times when I'll only get 1 packet out of 20.

You may also want to test one of your computers somewhere else, just to make sure.

 

I would also guess the router is dying, or the cable modem...but more likely the router.

 

I would also guess the router is dying, or the cable modem...but more likely the router.

 

Try other IE,such as opera.

 

Wow, that was incredibly quick to conclude the router is dying from such little evidence. I remember having numerous occasions where the internet connection would randomly disconnect, lose packets etc. and it has always been a software issue. Have you tried testing from a live CD as that is often an easy to way the isolate the problem as something to do with your OS/software.

 

Ill try pinging the router when i get home from work tonight.

I really don't want to give up and go out and buy a new router. The modem I have is about three months old, and the router itself is probably a few years old. It seems like the internet is cutting out every other day. My isp is Cox and I have good bandwidth (I play on xbox live with no lag). So I don't think it is something on that end. My vista machine was just formatted last month and the two xp machines were formatted over a year ago. I havn't applied any recent updates to any of them so I think that that rules out a software or os issue.

What is a live CD? Haven't heard of that. I know that my lan works fine bc I stream videos over to my mod'ed xbox and they play perfect.

 

i seriously doubt the router is dying. that would be a 1/1M thing.

if you can ping an external IP, but not resolve an domain name, then it's a DNS issue.

 

DNS doesn't normally go up and down with such alarming regularity, though.

I would suggest also trying to hook up one system directly to your cable modem to see how well it works that way and see if the connection still goes in and out or if it remains solid.

 

Ill try hooking directly into my modem tonight and I will leave it that way for a few days.......

What would that mean if it works fine with out the router inline?

and what would it mean if the same symptoms occur?

 

If the same symptoms occur, it would mean you need to discuss the issue with your ISP so that they can monitor your connection and see if it's a problem with your modem or a problem on their end.

If it works fine, that's a near-certain indicator that the router is bad.

 

Thanks for the tips. I guess I'll see what happens tonight when I unplug my router. I'll let you guys know tomorrow or the next day if it was my router or my isp

 

If this is dsl of fios you need to reduce the mtu to 1492. The def is 1500 which is to great for some networks. This can be found on the WAN (ISP) settings or adv settings.

 

Good idea blue68f100, but I think he has a stable connection with the same ISP prior to the flakiness that is occuring now.

 

I have a cable connection I think 5 down 1 up I think.

I have been very happy with my service but lately like I said originally it is on and off. I have a pretty strong feeling that it is the router. A couple weeks ago the wireless failed, I reflashed the router with dd wrt and it magically started working again. It is described in this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=184229

Would changing the mtu rate help me in my situation? Ive wired a lot of lans before so I am very good at crimping and that sort of stuff but Ive never really messed with router settings other than wep/wpa and port forwarding. So I have never really changed any settings from default. Do most people out here in nbr really get into optimizing routers? Would setting static ip's make a network more stable?

 

I will not hurt, and may correct some of the problems your having. Give it a try.

All optimization that is done in the router is MTU or QoS. Of all of the optimizers I have tried, the best was cablenut. If you try it get the optional pac, it contain more settings. But if the data is having problem at the router level it will not matter.