my internet has problems

[thefalloftroyx7]

i have Verizon DSL and i lose my connection to the internet every minute or so. I have a desktop that has a wired connection, but there also a laptop in the house with a wireless connection and that works fine. i have a westell modem, model 327w, someone please help iv had the problem for a good 2 months and it just gets worse.

[grue155]

Just to confirm my understanding of your LAN, it looks something like this:

desktopPC----(wired) ------ modem/router -------- Internet
laptopPC-----(wireless) --------/


where laptopPC has no connection problems in reaching the Internet
and
where desktopPC is have intermittent failures in reaching the Internet

Correct?

Let me ask this question: when the desktopPC has a connection problem, can it still reach the modem/router?

For troubleshooting, have you tried these:

Change the port being used to plug the desktopPC into the modem.
Replace the ethernet cable.

That kind of covers the basics. The worst case would be a failing ethernet port in the desktopPC.

[thefalloftroyx7]

yes that stuff is right, i don't know how to tell if the modem is reaching it when it disconnects, and iv tried all the ports and a few diffrent ethernet wires

[thefalloftroyx7]

and something i did notice was that the Ethernet port on the back of my comp is glowing green constantly, but then it flashes yellow, should it normally do that?

[thefalloftroyx7]

and something i did notice was that the Ethernet port on the back of my comp is glowing green constantly, but then it flashes yellow, should it normally do that?

[divyeshkaria]

yeah thats normal, command prompt and type ipconfig
what ever u get as your default gateway for local area connection, try to ping that by giving the command ping x.x.x.x(x= your default gateway address)

[thefalloftroyx7]

it said


Pinging x.x.x.x with 32 bytes of data:
General failure.
Replay from x.x.x.x: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Replay from x.x.x.x: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Replay from x.x.x.x: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for x.x.x.x:
Packets: sent = 4, Received = 3, Lost = 1, (25% loss),
Approximate round time trip in milli-seconds:
Minimum=0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms

[grue155]

That's not encouraging.

Let's see if Windows is recording any kind of problem, by checking the Windows event logs.

Click Start -> Run, and enter 'eventvwr.msc' into the box. This will bring up the event log viewer. The 'System' logs may have something. The other logs may have something also, but I'd check System first.

[thefalloftroyx7]

in the system logs i have over 64,000 events from the last 4 days... there all withing a few seconds of each other and they say things like.

intel(R) 82562v 10/100 network connection link has been disconnected

intel(R) 82562v 10/100 network connection link has been established: 100Mbps full duplex

most of them are these 2 over and over and over

[grue155]

This is sounding more and more like a hardware problem, in that the ethernet port is beginning to fail electrically.

One last check, is the Windows device manager. Click Start, and then right click on 'My Computer', and select Properties. From there, select the Hardware tab, and Device Manager.

That will give you a tree view of all the hardware in your machine. Select "network adapaters", and expand the tree. Select the ethernet adapter, right click for Properties, and then on the General tab, there is "Troubleshoot". This will run what diagnostics are available. That might tell something useful.

Since you have already tried different ethernet cables, the only other thing is to try a new ethernet port

Just to make sure, I'll suggest swapping ethernet cables. And then check the logs to see if there is anything different, like an absense of disconnect-reconnect log entries.

I'm presuming the ethernet port that you have in use is the one on your motherboard. That means acquiring a standalone Ethernet card, putting that card into your machine, and disabling the port that is installed on your motherboard. Not that hard to do, and not expensive, given that good standalone cards are quite inexpensive these days. Just a little time consuming.

Or, alternatively, take your machine to a repair shop, and let them do the work.

[thefalloftroyx7]

i cant find a troubleshoot button there, it say this device is working properly and there's only ok and cancel. and another thing i forgot to mention was that i have an xbox and that cant stay connected also and that is wired just like my comp.

and thankyou for the help so far i appreciate it

[grue155]

Does your xbox physically connect to the same thing that your PC is physically connected to? If so, then that is much much more likely to be where your problem is.

It is still looking like some hardware is failing. But it'd be good to make sure of which piece of hardware it is that is failing.

[thefalloftroyx7]

yea they are both connected to my modem but the wirless coming off of it is fine

[grue155]

Different circuits in the modem. Wireless is the radio portion, and the port connectors in the back of the box are the wired portion. With the xbox and the PC both having problems, and both plugged into the ports on the back of the modem, then it looks like the modem is the problem.

The obvious test, is to swap your modem for a known working modem, and see if the problem goes away. Did your ISP provide the modem? If so, then you'll need to talk to them.

[thefalloftroyx7]

i tried a different modem and it didn't work at all, so i didn't know if the other modem was bad too or if Verizon might assign modems or something, i actually have called Verizon 3 times and told them i was pretty sure the modem was broken and the one stupid person said what i was explaining was impossible...i hate them i might switch to comcast if i can make sure the modem is the problem and not the comp.

[grue155]

I got a chance to do some research, and located the Westell 327w user manual on the Verizon DSL support pages. Interesting device, the 327w. It's a DSL modem with a NAT router and wireless all rolled into one box. That would make trying to do a substitution test a bit awkward.

On thinking about this for a little bit, there is a way of testing the connection on your desktop machine to know for certain if the problem is in the desktop or not.

And that is to unplug the desktopPC from the modem, and then plug the ethernet cable into the port on your laptop. Normlly this would take a cross-over cable, but many (most?) laptops these days recognize the kind of wire plugged into the laptop ethernet port, and reconfigure themselves. I'm expecting that will happen with your laptop.

What I'm expecting, is that your desktopPC and your laptopPC will see a wired connection, and will eventually (after a minute or two) each work out a self-assigned IP address in the 169.254.x.x range. At that point, your desktop and your laptop should be able to talk to each other. A ping check would confirm that easily enough.

But, for this testing, that doesn't really matter. This is more of an electrical test. If the desktop is no longer getting all those system log messages while connected to the laptop, then the desktop is okay.

Try that, and see what happens.