Connectivity Issue

[Lilswitche]

For the past week I've been having an issue where when I'm browing in Firefox and about to open a new page (any random one), my connection pretty well fails. I'm unable to open any pages afterwards in firefox, IE, can't use /sea functions in FFXI, can't open MSN. It doesn't boot me from FFXI or Vent though, but afterwards I get considerable lag.

That being said, I'm using a Linksys WRT54G router, but I have like 7 computers in the house hooked up to it. EVERY SINGLE other computer is fine and does not have this issue. I'll typically be on for about 4-5 hours before this happens, and the only way for me to fix it (that I know of) is to simply restart my computer.

Going through task manager, I don't notice anything out of the ordinary when this does happen. I've already reinstalled network drivers, and just now I've done a system restore to see if that'll do anything. I'll edit a bit later if it does.

Any ideas as to the root of the problem and potential fixes? If you need me to post up anything further, feel free to let me know.

[Shuemue]

Check this;

Control Panel > Windows Firewall > make sure it's turned off > check the Advanced tab to make sure it's not enabled as an exception in there

[Fallso]

Do a few pings in the CMD to google, if they get through it's a software problem. Check for viruses etc, make sure all firewalls are open. Could also try running those apps on one of the other computers to make sure it's not a router firewall problem.

[Lilswitche]

So it happened again just now. I had turned off my windows firewall prior to this happening of course. I made sure there were no exceptions. I just turned off my router's firewall even. Did the ping, it went through.

I guess I might reinstall Firefox? It seems to only do it when I'm actively using it. If I sit down and just play ffxi I have no probs. I'm at a loss really, I have no clue.

[Fallso]

Try using IE for a little bit and see if it happens.

[Korietsu]

For the past week I've been having an issue where when I'm browing in Firefox and about to open a new page (any random one), my connection pretty well fails. I'm unable to open any pages afterwards in firefox, IE, can't use /sea functions in FFXI, can't open MSN. It doesn't boot me from FFXI or Vent though, but afterwards I get considerable lag.

That being said, I'm using a Linksys WRT54G router, but I have like 7 computers in the house hooked up to it. EVERY SINGLE other computer is fine and does not have this issue. I'll typically be on for about 4-5 hours before this happens, and the only way for me to fix it (that I know of) is to simply restart my computer.

Going through task manager, I don't notice anything out of the ordinary when this does happen. I've already reinstalled network drivers, and just now I've done a system restore to see if that'll do anything. I'll edit a bit later if it does.

Any ideas as to the root of the problem and potential fixes? If you need me to post up anything further, feel free to let me know.

I happen to have the same router, however, my question to you is, are you using time warner cable for your ISP? I've lagging in TF2 and XBL and I cant figure it out as to why i'm lagging, even when I DMZ my box.

[Lilswitche]

Update: I tried only using IE for a bit, and having the same problems.

[spaghetti_monster]

Do you use ZoneAlarm? I had this same issue a few weeks back. I tried everything else first, cuz I just wouldn't blame ZA. Well turns out, after shutting down ZA everything was fine. I tinkered around with ZA for awhile and finally deleted the current network and allowed it to make a new trusted zone. Everything has been running smooth ever since.

Good Luck

[Lilswitche]

Do you use ZoneAlarm?

Nope.

[Norellicus]

How about other software firewalls...Norton Internet Security, McAfee, etc?

[Shuemue]

Have you tested a different wireless adapter in the broken machine?

[Lilswitche]

I have no anti-virus/firewall software installed on my computer atm (personal preference). I'm using a hardwire connection to the router and not wireless. I've been trying to see if it happens at all when I'm not using FFXI, which is very rare though. I was on for a few hours tonite playing around watching movies without FFXI open and it didn't happen, but atm that doesn't really provide me with any concrete proof.

I just reset my router to default configurations, because I'm just scrounging for anything that could possibly help, as I'm not too savy in this area of troubleshooting.

[Cephius]

I have no anti-virus/firewall software installed on my computer atm (personal preference). I'm using a hardwire connection to the router and not wireless. I've been trying to see if it happens at all when I'm not using FFXI, which is very rare though. I was on for a few hours tonite playing around watching movies without FFXI open and it didn't happen, but atm that doesn't really provide me with any concrete proof.

I just reset my router to default configurations, because I'm just scrounging for anything that could possibly help, as I'm not too savy in this area of troubleshooting.

Why people do this continues to baffle me... anyway, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say you have some spyware, have you run any scans? Links to free spyware software in the sticky in this forum..

[Killgannon]

I have no anti-virus/firewall software installed on my computer atm (personal preference). I'm using a hardwire connection to the router and not wireless. I've been trying to see if it happens at all when I'm not using FFXI, which is very rare though. I was on for a few hours tonite playing around watching movies without FFXI open and it didn't happen, but atm that doesn't really provide me with any concrete proof.

I just reset my router to default configurations, because I'm just scrounging for anything that could possibly help, as I'm not too savy in this area of troubleshooting.

Why people do this continues to baffle me... anyway, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say you have some spyware, have you run any scans? Links to free spyware software in the sticky in this forum..

you and me both, especially since most budget shitty isps even provided FREE norton for you with their shitty service so that you can claim you're actually paying for something useful>.>

[Lilswitche]

I'll do a couple online virus scans for the sake of it. But I already checked the reg startup stuff, nothing out of the ordinary, no weird processes running, that I can see. I run noscript tho! Nonetheless, I'll post back with the results.

[Cjskater]

Why people do this continues to baffle me... anyway, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say you have some spyware, have you run any scans? Links to free spyware software in the sticky in this forum..

Because most of us aren't so retarded we need to have a guide to hold our hand through the internets while we drink our sippy cup. I haven't had a virus in over 6 years and I don't keep either installed unless I want to scan to make sure I don't have any, which like I said it never finds one. IMO You are the best virus scan (prevention) and you don't need one if you know what you are doing. (this doesn't include my routers firewall)

[Korietsu]

I've been reading a bit online about the WRT54G Router, and apparently its a piece of shit when it comes to connectivity. I just updated my firmware for it, for the second time in the routers life, and its not working any better than previous. Apparently there's some opensource stuff for the router, but requires alot of time and effort to set up. Even with port forwarding and such, I have problems with torrents, as well as TF2, and XBL. Sort of annoying getting cheated due to lag in everything I play, or having slow load times on a 7meg connection from roadrunner.

[ismarc]

One of the main issues I've seen with the Linksys "soho" routers is that the dns cache is not cleared properly in all situations, which leads to long dns lookup times, failed dhcp requests (because it tries to identify the host network) and so on. Generally this will only affect any new dns requests as it has to go through the full lookup rather than caching it on the router, but should affect all computers equally.

Why people do this continues to baffle me...

I don't understand why people think they need a software firewall. Unless you have one computer that's directly connected to the internet, you have no need for a software firewall. Your little dinky soho router is doing NAT. This means that any traffic destined for your computer has to be forwarded along by the router, and in order for it to be forwarded to your router, there has to have been a "connection" established (I use the word connection even though UDP is considered connectionless...the router just has to detect that it is a request to allow traffic). Unless you specifically have ports forwarded on your router, YOU ALREADY HAVE A FIREWALL. As for anti-virus, it's really easy to not get infected if you practice safe browsing habits. However, I've always been paranoid since the first virus to embed itself in such a way to where it could not really be removed (write itself into protected directories, etc.), essentially "having knowledge" of the anti-virus. For this reason, I have one of my local servers perform virus scans on the windows machines on my network. Then again a large portion of my network runs off NAS and uses local drives for booting. The only machine that doesn't is my FFXI machine, which runs nothing but FFXI (and occasionally calc.exe).

[Shuemue]

I use a software firewall alongside my router simply for the convenience of having it report whenever an application requests access to the internet.

[ismarc]

I use a software firewall alongside my router simply for the convenience of having it report whenever an application requests access to the internet.

Yeah, I personally call that "convenience" an "annoyance", but that's the only feature that is useful, except that they normally just use the process name which doesn't always correlate to the program which spawned the process which leads to confusion and problems for people who are not well-versed with computers (and serious connectivity problems at the same time).