Who understands computer networking?

[ChallengerHK]

Thought about this for a while. That might be the problem if the laptop were left running all day, and then maybe it could interfere with the router itself. The laptop is off all day however, while the desktop does download all day.

[PlumCrazyRTSE]

Is your desktop connected through a wired ethernet connection or a wireless connection?

[miketyler]

Do you have another PC in the house that you can compare to? If so, are you seeing the same behavior on it?

This sounds like a local PC issue to me and probably has little or nothing to do with your router or your PC's connection to the net via the router. We see IE getting jacked up more and more these days. But to be sure, start by testing with another PC. If it tests ok, try hard connecting the problem machine to the network using a LAN cable. This will remove WiFi from the equation. If issue is still present try clearing all internet temp files/cookies, go into Windows/temp and clear that folder and also clear the temp files cached in your local profile.

Of course there wil be a few files that are in use and system wont let you delete. This is equivalent to giving your PC an enema and as long as you are careful bears no risk of data loss.

[miketyler]

disregard the above, I missed your post where you siad all three PC's are behaving the same way. Remove the router and connect one PC to your DSL modem direct and test. Maybe this is a router issue after all.

[Bullitt-]

Did you ever check to see if your modem has the router function?

Another problem I had years ago with our DSL when I added a router. Our DSL modem has a router built in & the second router caused problems that ruined the modem. The tech that came out replaced the modem & suggested I use a switch instead, have gone many years with no issues. I recently added a wireless router & knowing the problems disabled the router function so it is just a switch as well.

[ChallengerHK]

Is your desktop connected through a wired ethernet connection or a wireless connection?

The desktop is wired, but wired through the router.

disregard the above, I missed your post where you siad all three PC's are behaving the same way. Remove the router and connect one PC to your DSL modem direct and test. Maybe this is a router issue after all.

Good idea. I'll try this tonight.

Did you ever check to see if your modem has the router function?

I'll see what I ca find out. Comcast's people are less than helpful.

[ChallengerHK]

Still working on this.

What is MTU? I have a setting in the router control for MTU between manual and automatic. While the router was locked I switched it to automatic and suddenly I was online again as if by magic. Can't swear one way or another that this has solved the problem, until maybe after it runs trouble free for most of a day, but I wanted to find out anyway.

[Bullitt-]

Maximum Transmission Units....never had to deal with it

http://www.dslreports.com/faq/7120

[ChallengerHK]

Maximum Transmission Units....never had to deal with it

http://www.dslreports.com/faq/7120

Couldn't open the page, but the name alone gives me a clue as to what I'm looking at. Maybe. Think it might have been chocking my connection?

[ChallengerHK]

I did finally get into that site. Interesting reading, but since I've had the issue again since I made that change I think it's safe to say that MTU is not the source of the problem, although it's probably related.

Two things: first, as far as I can tell, the modem does have a router function built in. The modem software control is extremely limited, though, so I don't expect to find any help there, although I may be wrong.

Second, last night I finally tested the idea of removing the router completely. On its own the modem ran fine all night long and the connection was up when I got up this morning.

[kingtroll]

You had mentioned that you were connected and downloading but could not get web pages. When this happens that usually means you have a DNS issue. This means your web sites names are not being associated with ip address's basically. You should try to put in your ip settings your dns server as 4.2.2.1 or 4.2.2.2   These addresses are DNS servers out on the internet that will resolve your DNS problem. If you don't know how to change your ip settings just google it for you operating system.

[ChallengerHK]

Thanks for the info. I think I know what you talking about and where it goes, but if it turns out that I'm wrong I'll post back for more info.

In the meantime, can you give me a high level idea of what these IPs are doing when I input them? Put another way, what is happening differently when these IPs are available versus what is happening now?

[ChallengerHK]

The DNS entries did not appear to work. HEre's where and how I entered the IPs; let me know if I did anything incorrectly.

[kingtroll]

You did it correctly. Make sure you have a ip address other than one that starts with 169. Go to start  the round button in windows vista and type in the start search window "CMD". You should get a dos window. Then type in ipconfig and you should see a ip address for your network card. If it starts with 169 then you are not getting a address from your router for the internet.

[ChallengerHK]

The saga continues...

Long story, but I've been doing a lot of reading on this. There's at least a good chance that it has something to do with DHCP lease renewal, which I think I comprehend at a very basic level. Are there settings for this that I can get to without having to learn to write code? Something I can easily look at and perhaps tinker with?

If it starts with 169 then you are not getting a address from your router for the internet.

It gave me 192.168.1.101. As I understand this, that's the IP that the router is giving to my laptop, not the IP of my connection to the net through Comcast, right?