I've been experiencing an issue with my home network that has plagued me for almost a year. Working from my Windows XP laptop, I would constantly have to reset my wireless adapter (several times a day or even several times an hour on bad days). Once reset, usually the connection would be good for a little while. I suspected that it may be the Ubee Residential Gateway (wireless cable router) supplied by Time Warner about a year ago. So I bought a Belkin N750 wireless router and added that to my network. Things went well for about a day. Then I noticed that in my normal workspace in my home, the signal is weaker than 10ft in any direction. OK, so I decided to take the wireless out of the equation altogether. I turned off the wireless and connected with a cable. But even with a cable, my connection won't last long enough to perform a backup. (I backup to a another computer on the network, btw.)
Here's my setup: I have TWC roadrunner internet coming into the Ubee router. The wireless and DHCP server are disabled on that unit. The new Belkin is wired to the Ubee. The Belkin's wireless and DHCP are enabled. I have a desktop and (temporarily) my laptop cabled to the Belkin. I also have a Macbook and Windows XP netbook connected to the Belkin wirelessly right now (more about that later). Both desktop and laptop are not using DHCP, but macbook and netbook are using DHCP)
I tried driver updates, diagnostic software, etc on my laptop, switching out cables, and removing everything from the network except my laptop and desktop to no avail. A VNC connection from the laptop to the desktop would drop within 15 minutes.
So, in a last ditch effort to try to isolate exactly where the fault was, I downloaded a ping monitor program (EMCO Ping Monitor). This program pings a number of hosts repeatedly and logs any failures. I put it on my laptop and my desktop and set them up to ping each other, both routers and google.com. I also had them ping a macbook that I connected wirelessly. Also, I ran the monitor on a XP netbook connected wirelessly, pinging all of the aforementioned boxes. Guess what?
Not a single dropped connection since! It's been four hours. I've had a VNC connection opened for the past 3 hours (a record in my book) without resets or lags. OK, so why does this constant pinging keep my connections alive (including network shares on my desktop) that would normally drop/crash every few minutes at it's worst? Things seem faster too.
Keep in mind, I was still experiencing problems with only the desktop and laptop on the network (i.e. no wireless or DHCP anywhere). Now, things are working great with 4 computers. I haven't yet stopped the monitoring, but I suspect the issues will return once I do. If so, where should I look to resolve the issue?
Network diagram attached.
Just to recap the symptoms from my laptop even with wired connection, RealVNC connections to desktop would drop frequently; would get frequent page timeouts when browsing web; frequent network folders (on desktop) unavailable; unable to perform disk backup to desktop because connection would fail well before backup was complete. All of those have disappeared with the Ping Monitor running.
Thanks in advance for any info.
Here's my setup: I have TWC roadrunner internet coming into the Ubee router. The wireless and DHCP server are disabled on that unit. The new Belkin is wired to the Ubee. The Belkin's wireless and DHCP are enabled. I have a desktop and (temporarily) my laptop cabled to the Belkin. I also have a Macbook and Windows XP netbook connected to the Belkin wirelessly right now (more about that later). Both desktop and laptop are not using DHCP, but macbook and netbook are using DHCP)
I tried driver updates, diagnostic software, etc on my laptop, switching out cables, and removing everything from the network except my laptop and desktop to no avail. A VNC connection from the laptop to the desktop would drop within 15 minutes.
So, in a last ditch effort to try to isolate exactly where the fault was, I downloaded a ping monitor program (EMCO Ping Monitor). This program pings a number of hosts repeatedly and logs any failures. I put it on my laptop and my desktop and set them up to ping each other, both routers and google.com. I also had them ping a macbook that I connected wirelessly. Also, I ran the monitor on a XP netbook connected wirelessly, pinging all of the aforementioned boxes. Guess what?
Not a single dropped connection since! It's been four hours. I've had a VNC connection opened for the past 3 hours (a record in my book) without resets or lags. OK, so why does this constant pinging keep my connections alive (including network shares on my desktop) that would normally drop/crash every few minutes at it's worst? Things seem faster too.
Keep in mind, I was still experiencing problems with only the desktop and laptop on the network (i.e. no wireless or DHCP anywhere). Now, things are working great with 4 computers. I haven't yet stopped the monitoring, but I suspect the issues will return once I do. If so, where should I look to resolve the issue?
Network diagram attached.
Just to recap the symptoms from my laptop even with wired connection, RealVNC connections to desktop would drop frequently; would get frequent page timeouts when browsing web; frequent network folders (on desktop) unavailable; unable to perform disk backup to desktop because connection would fail well before backup was complete. All of those have disappeared with the Ping Monitor running.
Thanks in advance for any info.
