crxforum

Ok here is the situation. I plugged in my PC to the network at my new house. For some unknown reason when I do this the internet will work anywhere from 15min - 1 hour and then just die. It will come back for sparatic bursts of normality for maybe 8-10 seconds every 5-10min and then go back to not working at all. It will try and search for the page Im loading or thing Im doing but it will just time out and not work. I have no idea what is going on.

The router we are using is a Linksys wireless router with my computer plugged directly into it. Now Ive updated the firmware on the router and done everything I can think of. I call technical support and they keep telling me to wait a day and see how it goes. Well its been like a week and its still not working. No offence to Parjeet or Boonbat or whoever else I called at the Bombay call center they have for Linksys but they have no idea what the hell is going on and keep asking me the same questions over and over and over and dont listen to me when I tell them that Ive already done this or that.

I released my IP, renewed it, reset the router a million times and it just goes back to working for a few minutes and then not working at all. Anyone have any idea what the hell might be going on here? Its really hard when I have to use the internet for work and nothing is working.

Im the only PC on the network with 2 other Macs on it. Their comps work fine when I am off the net but when I plug in within like 15min - 1 hour it kills the connection when I am connected.

Please if you know anything, have any suggestions, or anything at all please help me out. This is driving me insane.

Thanks
CRX Forum

sailor

Are you knocking the other Macs off the network too, or is it just your computer thats getting disconnected?

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juan99

You can try re-installing the network card (the drivers). I've had a similar problem in the past with one of my computers. It seemed to kick the connection when I turned it on. You can also clone the MAC address with the router to give it a reserved IP. Sometimes that helps also.

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flat5

Does the router have a known DNS server or does it have to look for one? Can you still ping when you can't connect to sites?

Some routers don't like PC's & MACs on the same network, it seems.
That's my very limited experience.

bendsley

TCP/IP is the same protocol stack (based on RFC) across almost every platform out there. Granted some companies like MS like to make changes to their protocol stack, but these changes are additions; they still strictly adhere to rfc specs.

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Psycho Dad

I had a Linksys router once that had a similar problem. What I found worked was to plug a hub in between the cable modem and router. After that I had no more problems.

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flat5

Hi bendsley,

What you say is true but I tried to help a friend who had a MAC and an XP computer.
Router (E-Tech) would not see both. I gave up after 5 hours.
Next day a Pro, a guy who does this sort of thing every day, spent hours and tried three different routers before he got it working. Cost her a lot of money.

That's why I said the above.

cyrnel

Interesting problem but crxforum seems to have left the building. Hellooooo!

Any error messages on PC or Mac? (besides the usual timeouts)

I'd like to know how you're testing connectivity. Test from cmd.com. Ping, nslookup. Can you at least ping the router? Does anything work when browsing is down?

Does the problem still occur after the delay if you boot the PC in "safe mode with networking"? (Boot safe mode w/net, reset router, wait.)

How are other systems connected to the router? Any wireless?

Have you tried another router? Even of the same model?

Intermittent problems make me howl at the moon and think about things like power draw of a 3rd link or a ground loop from that cat 5 connection. Try wireless on your system, at least temporarily.

I'd rate TCP/IP specs as less of a guarantee than community harshness when someone doesn't stick to them for an implementation. The way router code is shared among vendors, or even shared hardware with different boxes and labels, if there's a problem it's probably well known or it's been fixed. Anyway, we'd have heard of this if it were a Linksys thing, unless maybe he's using an alternate firmware? (openwpa mod, etc)

crxforum, are you still here?

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spindles

I remember reading about some people having problems with the logging on their routers ending up full and causing a hang. I can't seem to find exactly where I read it though...

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Jinn

I bet I know what this is! I had an almost identical problem on my setup a few weeks ago, but with three PCs on the network. It would work find, but it felt like it dropped every few seconds to really slow, and then came back to full speed.

Start> Run these:
Watch the ping times. If you're getting a huge drop at a certain IP, find out who owns that IP. If its your ISP, ask them specifically if there's an issue at that IP.

For me, however, it was a virus. There was a recent FF exploit that let virus drop into a hidden folder in Program Files directory, and it tried to DL some stuff from about 12 different "hacker" sites every 9 ms. Watching my ping, I saw this.. 30.. 30.. 30.. 30... 30. 1209.. 30... 28... 28... 30... 2014...

Ran Symantec, Adaware, and Spybot -- you might be surprised that you've got a virus eating up bandwidth trying to propogate itself.

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Jack1.0

Try and simplify the situation as much as possible. Hook your PC directly to your DSL/Cable modem. Run the computer for several hours like that. Monitoring the performance. Next add the Router back in but only with the PC connected. Next add one of the MACs back to the router, test, disconnect 1st MAC, connect MAC # 2, test. Finally add all three machines back to the router. These steps will help you isolate what elements in your network are part of the problem.

Additionally, are all of the machines set to DHCP? Mixing DHCP and manually coded IP addresses is asking for problems. I also agree with JinnKai, your machines need to thoroughly scanned by anti virus and anti spyware software.

By the way, be sure to be persistent when you talk to tech support. You should get a case number and write it down. Most call centers create a case number even if they do not tell you. This will help you avoid repeating yourself every time you call. If the person you talk to can not resolve the issue you need to demand to be passed on to the next level of tech support. They work in tiers, tier 1 support may do nothing more than answer the phone and forward you to the appropriate tier 2. Tier 2 probably has very little training and is reading from a script of questions. Tier 3 and 4 is where you normally find people that have actual training and knowledge.

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Plaid13

YAY linksys routers! i have one as well and well its nothing but a pain in the butt. I have to reboot it all the time to get it to stop pulling all sorts of crap.