Living in a house of 5 students, all fairly heavy internet users.
We've got Virgin Media XL 20mb internet. When we first got it it was cruising along with a max download of around 13.5mb and upload was spot on. Not perfect but a huge improvement over the useless sky internet we had had for the previous month.
Before I continue I'll point out I know very little about networking
(as you'll probably be able to tell)
It was fine for the first few weeks, but now its becoming highly unstable, regularly losing internet, and often all networking.
We have a fairly battered Linksys WRT54G v5. One of my first ideas why it might be playing up would be the number of devices connected. We have 5 desktop pcs, a laptop acting as a download box connected 24/7, a flatmates PS3, 2 other laptops used occasionally, and a Wii used even less often.
The cable comes into the house through my room, my pc has one port on the router, one port goes to a switch upstairs with all the other desktops on it.
Another port goes to the download box. Nasty Layout I know, but it was the best we could do with the cable coming in where it does. We tried wireless, it was even more hopeless, as well as being slow transferring files between the machines.
Was fairly stable over the weekend. but since my flatmate returned from a weekend away with his PS3 its disconnected every 10-20 minutes...
Constant restarts of the router are required to get any net access.
A flatmate who knows a fair bit more about networking than me set us all up with static ips, which hasn't really helped at all.
The thing that is most odd is most of the time the net goes down, its only browsing the web. Online games carry on without hitch, irc doesn't cut out. Even msn usually manages to stay connected.
I'm just baffled
Anyone able to give me a clue where to start?
We've got Virgin Media XL 20mb internet. When we first got it it was cruising along with a max download of around 13.5mb and upload was spot on. Not perfect but a huge improvement over the useless sky internet we had had for the previous month.
Before I continue I'll point out I know very little about networking
(as you'll probably be able to tell)It was fine for the first few weeks, but now its becoming highly unstable, regularly losing internet, and often all networking.
We have a fairly battered Linksys WRT54G v5. One of my first ideas why it might be playing up would be the number of devices connected. We have 5 desktop pcs, a laptop acting as a download box connected 24/7, a flatmates PS3, 2 other laptops used occasionally, and a Wii used even less often.
The cable comes into the house through my room, my pc has one port on the router, one port goes to a switch upstairs with all the other desktops on it.
Another port goes to the download box. Nasty Layout I know, but it was the best we could do with the cable coming in where it does. We tried wireless, it was even more hopeless, as well as being slow transferring files between the machines.
Was fairly stable over the weekend. but since my flatmate returned from a weekend away with his PS3 its disconnected every 10-20 minutes...
Constant restarts of the router are required to get any net access.
A flatmate who knows a fair bit more about networking than me set us all up with static ips, which hasn't really helped at all.
The thing that is most odd is most of the time the net goes down, its only browsing the web. Online games carry on without hitch, irc doesn't cut out. Even msn usually manages to stay connected.
I'm just baffled
Anyone able to give me a clue where to start?
