Home network help please

[davidp]

Hi everyone,

I've got an ongoing issue with a new setup I've put together which suits the physical placement of my bits'n'bobs, but there is one thing that keeps occurring.

I'm on sky, running a Netgear DGND3700v2 as my modem and router. This connects directly to one PC which has no problems at all with network access or internet access.

The DGND3700v2 also connects to a small Netgear DG834v3, which in turn has another PC, Skybox and PS3 attached.

The DG834v3 has had it's DHCP turned off so my main modem/router is allocating IP's.

The problem is that the PC attached to the DG834v3 loses it's internet connection intermittently. The local network is absolutely fine because I'm running Synergy to share a kb&mouse between my two PCs, but the internet just becomes unavailable. It often takes around 10-15 seconds to come back to life.

I've gone down the reserved IP route to try to resolve this already without success. I've also checked power settings on the second PC as it has been suggested that separate components can power down but everything looks fine here too.

I'm wondering if it's a conflict between the two Netgear devices, on the odd occassion when I've tried to access the router through www.routerlogin.net, it has tried to take me to the smaller router instead of my main one. However this has only happened on about two attempts of fifty.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this issue please? Any help greatly appreciated!

Edit - something I've just noticed is when the internet drops on the second PC connected to the DG834v3, my router bookmark connects me to this router instead of DGND3700v2. When the internet is back up, the bookmark then reverts back to the DGND3700v2... >_<

 

[bremen1874]

You presumably checked that the DG834v3's management IP isn't clashing with anything else?

A DG834v3 must be getting old. If you're just using it as a switch I'd try replacing with an actual switch. They aren't expensive.

 

[Ryan-3]

I'd say that the two devices may be conflicting one another. Unmanaged switches are pretty cheap, so using one of those would remove any chance of the conflict.

 

[xGBHxPegasus]

Have you checked the DNS settings?

Could be that the second router is taking over the DNS settings (could explain why the bookmark switches over).

Also whats the IP address's for the routers?

 

[davidp]

The DG834v3 worked fine before with my old router (rip BEBox) as a switch.

I can't even connect to the DG834v3, I've allocated it an IP address using it's mac address (as it didnt have one before this) and even then I can't connect to it through a browser.

On my second PC, it was set to automatic DNS, I've just changed it now so I'll see how it goes.

 

[bremen1874]

The DGND3700v2 and DG834v3 both use 192.168.0.1 as their management IPs. If you haven't changed one of them you'll get a clash and have problems.

The BEBox will have used 192.168.1.254 so there wouldn't have been an issue.

edit:

I can't even connect to the DG834v3, I've allocated it an IP address using it's mac address.

You haven't. There's no way a DG834v3 is going to pick up an IP address via DHCP. You need to log into it and manually assign it an IP that doesn't clash the DGND3700v2's management IP or DHCP range.

If you can't access both routers via their management IPs something is misconfigured.

On my second PC, it was set to automatic DNS, I've just changed it now so I'll see how it goes.

Unlikely to help. If both routers have the same management IP then that's also going to be duplicating the gateway IP.

Buy an unmanaged switch and all of the problems should go away.

 

[davidp]

Cheers for the help, much appreciated. I've had the DG834 out and reset, turned off dhcp and changed the router's own ip so it shouldn't clash any longer.

Seems to be working fine now, thanks a lot for the tip.

And yes I should just get an unmanaged switch but it's raining. Will pick one up later in the week!

Thanks a lot for the speedy replies and help everyone.