Network connectivity issues

[Polar Bear]

At the moment I seem to be losing my home network every 10 to 15 minutes.  Sometimes I have to power down the adsl router modem, sometimes it recoveres itself some time later.

When it dies I can ping the router and it does not respond.

The router is a Belkin model which I have used for three years without hassle, and it has two pc's connected via cable to it.

Any suggestions please?

p.s. I may not respond for some time pending availability!

Oh, and I have recently replaced one of the connected computers but everything was fine for the first five days! 

[Polar Bear]

Update:

I have reverted back to the old pc and all has suddenly become stable again.   This indicates to me that the new laptop is doing somehting to confuse or lock the adsl router/modem.   Any ideas please?

[nuttycyclist]

Duplicate IP address on the PCs?

[Polar Bear]

Checked all that.   What I have noticed is that if I let them try to find their own IP they cannot.   Thus all the pc's are xxx.xxx.x.n+1, xxx.xxx.x.n+2, etc. where the router itself is n   I specify the subset mask as 255.255.255.0.  The Default Gateway is the IP of the router as is the Preferred DNS Server.   n = 8 for this machine and it works just dandy.

Is there anything else I should set maybe?   

[pcolbeck]

Is the new laptop a Vista one ?

[Polar Bear]

XP Home.   All our pc's are XP home except this one which is XP Pro.

[Polar Bear]

Actually I lied.  Two of the pc's are Pro,  four are Home.   The two connected to the network permanently are a Home and a Pro.   The Pro machine was replaced with the new laptop with Home installed.   At the moment I'm back on the old desktop which is humming along nicely with no network issues and has been so most of today. 

The laptop comes with onsite support so next week I'm going to get them in.

[tonycollinet]

Is it worth swapping the IP of the laptop, with a PC that works OK.

Is the DHCP server on the router enabled? If not this could be why the PC's can't find an address. Or is there another device on the network which is running a DHCP server?

[Polar Bear]

Hi Tony,

Just checked.   DCHP is set to yes and a range from nnn.nnnn.n.2 to nnn.nnn.n.100 is specified.   The router/model is nnn.nnn.n.1.   

DCHP lease time is set to 'Forever'.   However, when I look at LAN DCHP Client list it is empty.   This seems odd to me because this computer, with which I am looking directly at the router settings with must be connected, no?

[TimO]

...erm, but didn't you say earlier on that you were setting your IP addresses manually?

[Polar Bear]

...erm, but didn't you say earlier on that you were setting your IP addresses manually?

Yes because when it tries to acquire an IP it never gets one. 

<eidt> That's also the case for all of the pc's. </edit>

Can you explain the significance of your statement for me please?

[MSeries]

...erm, but didn't you say earlier on that you were setting your IP addresses manually?

Yes because when it tries to acquire an IP it never gets one. 

<eidt> That's also the case for all of the pc's. </edit>

Can you explain the significance of your statement for me please?

If DHCP is not being used and you said you have set the IPs manually then you should switch it off. I am not surprised the 'client list' is empty, the router isn't configuring any clients. I

So what has changed to coincide with it failing ? Just a new laptop ? I would say if it has caused a config screw up, it wouldn't work at all. Sounds more like a fault at the other end or a hardware problem. I had an issue with a wireless access point that meant it had to be power cycled regularly, it was a faulty power supply apparently. The whole unit was changed under warranty.

My 2p worth. Might be off the mark but food for thought.

[Polar Bear]

OK, I've switched DCHP off.  It will have been like that from the outset and I've not changed router settings previously.   If this posts it proves that at the moment connectivity is still working.

Quite simply yes.  The XP Home laptop replaced the XP pro desktop.   The router started freezing after this date, but nothing significant that I am aware of for about five days.  The complication in the matter is that we were having BT connectivity problems before that which they claim to have sorted.

I've been back on the old desktop with no problems since yesterday morning and am using that now.   I don't want to switch back to the laptop at this point in time as I cannot afford to keep losing connectivity.     

[TimO]

I was just thinking that if DHCP is turned on, on the router, and you are assigning IPs manually, the router may get confused/upset if you are using an IP which it doesn't think that it has assigned.  It's possible that it was happy with some IPs, which it thought it had assigned to your machines, but for some reason it doesn't like the new machine.

Either way, if you've got a working configuration (at least temporarily), and you've can't afford to muck things up, this probably isn't a time to experiment!

[Polar Bear]

Probably next Thursday I can spend some time playing with the network again.  Just too much on between now and then.   As it is currently reliable I'll stick rather than twist so-to-speak