Networking problem from hell

scwilson

scwilson

scwilson

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Joined
18 Oct 2010
Posts
193
Location
South Coast UK
Folks,

I'm at the point now of contemplating setting fire to my PC. I have;

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
Asus Crosshair III
4GB Corsair DDR3 running at 1333MHz
60GB SSD (OCZ Sata II)
Blu-Ray read and write
Couple of Sata II 3.5 disks
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

So it was set-up in November 2010 and has run just fine with my BT HomeHub 2 over ethernet. About a month or so ago, I tried the HH3 and I could not browse any web sites, click the browser and it struggled to display content, despite Windows 7 reporting I had an internet connection. Thinking it was faulty, BT sent me another (Type B again) and this did the same. I used the same ethernet cable and plugged this into my laptop running Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit and it connected fine and I could browse the internet so at the time this kind of proved the ethernet cable and router was OK but something was wrong with my desktop PC. Foolishly, I re-installed Windows and it made no difference. When I plugged my HH2 back in, all worked OK.

Then, the HH2 modem packed up so I thought I would try a third party router and got a Netgear N300 (2200) a few days ago and whilst this can connect to BT broadband, it exhibits the same fault the HH3 did when I try and browse the internet on my desktop, i.e, nothing is displayed, pings to websites return nothing. Again, I connect my laptop using the same ethernet cable and it works fine.

So I'm starting to realize, for some reason, my PC is to blame. I have even tried a new Intel network GB card and disabled the onboard realtek GB controller. Still exhibits the same problem.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I have never seen anything like this. Because the HH2 packed up, I basically can't now connect via ethernet from my desktop PC and am using a laptop via wireless as this seems to work OK.

I just can't understand the problem. Can a particular version of Windows cause this? Could the motherboard be faulty? It was odd that HH2 worked (when it did) and the HH3 had routing problems.
 
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Stelly said:
Yup with a realtek one, have you tried updating drivers? Can you also trying outputting your ipconfig /all onto here so I can have a look?

Cheers,

Stelly
Click to expand...

I tried updating to the latest and rolling back to the version that came with the motherboard. It made no difference.

I'll update the ipconfig info this evening.
 
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Benihana said:
Sounds like it could be a DNS issue with your router/BT, you could try setting the DNS to use google (8.8.8.8) and see if that changes anything...
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion but wouldn't this imply my laptop would have the same issue when connected using the same ethernet cable? Which it didn't.
 
I think, I'll try with a Fedora 16 live CD so no changes will be made to the system, this way I should be able to tell if it's Windows or not.
 
jimjamuk said:
Yes post the output from ipconfig /all

you could also try ping -a www.cisco.com and see if the name resolves to an IP.

I think either you are not picking up DNS or an IP correctly from the DHCP allocation.

If you get a 169 address reported from the ipconfig /all then plug the laptop back in see what IP range you router is dishing out and make a static entry on you PC and try again
Click to expand...


Will try later this evening. Thank you.
 
So the same problem exists whether I use a BT HH3 or Netgear N300 (2200) and the annoying thing is; my PC has worked just fine for almost a year with the BT HH2 until it packed up a week or so ago.
 
I haven't tried a different ethernet cable. I assumed since it worked with the HH2 that it was OK. I also got a 1Gb connection when connected to a Gigabit router via the HH2. I'll try a new cable just to rule that out. It's just internet browsing that is causing me problems.
 
Ok - update.

I've tested all of my ethernet cables with a cable tester and they all report OK. Every wire inside was checked (end to end).

I'm actually writing this from the Ubuntu 11 liveCD on the same machine (useful tool by the way :)) I was having network problems with (Windows 7) so I guess this proves it is something to do with Windows 7?
 
It does seem to be something wrong with my machine so I've hooked up my HH3 which I am now connected to via wireless on my laptop (192.168.1.64).

Windows IP Configuration for the desktop is;

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : Megatron
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 48-5B-39-02-EB-69
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::984d:3d72:9243:6f0c%14(Preferred)
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.65(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : 01 December 2011 20:00:08
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : 02 December 2011 20:00:08
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.254
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.254
DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 289954617
DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-16-2F-8F-A6-48-5B-39-02-EB-69

DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.254
192.168.1.254
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

Tunnel adapter isatap.{CA7E7E34-E4FA-4873-94AF-A58F72DB9798}:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft ISATAP Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Tunnel adapter Local Area Connection* 11:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IPv6 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 2001:0:5ef5:79fd:30f6:16d9:3f57:febe(Pref
erred)
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::30f6:16d9:3f57:febe%12(Preferred)
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : ::
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Disabled
 
OK - I think I have given up on this. I've re-installed a different version of Windows 7 (desperate I know), but it behaves the same way. I can ping google.com one minute and get no packet loss, but if I try say 10 seconds later, I could get 25% loss. Ping again and its OK. I try and ping apple and nothing comes back.

I noticed on the HH3 there was a dynamic dns option that you could enable but I'm unsure how this works as it says you need a username and password etc.

If anyone else has any further bright ideas, let me know, otherwise I think I will disable the onboard LAN and try a USB wireless device of some kind.

Probably try either a Netgear 150 or 300 device. Presumably the 150 and 300 refers to speed of network copy and wouldn't affect download speeds? My wireless g card in my latop rips along with the HH3 and I get 850Kbps download speed +.
 
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ok - thanks.

What would cause a problem on a machine where a network connection can be established, windows reports it has an internet connection but browsing the internet doesn't work properly? I know I tested the ethernet cable with a cable tester but I even tried a new piece of ethernet to rule that out, still causing me problems. Is it possible that the motherboard is causing these problems?

It is almost as if it is a DNS issue, but wirelessly the hub works fine and event ethernet from a different machine works fine (i.e my latop) so I guess it rules that out.
 
Ok - will try that but think I did try that before hand, I can't remember what I have and haven't tried :)

I've also borrowed a couple of Intel Pro/1000 PT dual port network cards and will see how those behave before jumping to wireless USB.

I think I've ruled pretty much everything out. Short of it being something to do with memory, cpu, motherboard which I can't believe it would be.
 
OK - I've installed the Intel Pro/1000 PT dual port card. Works fine on the network, can copy between laptop and desktop etc but I notice the internet browsing on the desktop still is not working. I also notice that after about 10 minutes of being connected via ethernet, the router stats on the HH3 show;

Line attentuation -0.2dB / 4.7 dB
Noise Margin 0.0 dB / 0.0dB
FEC Events (Down/Up) 1462032/34
CRC Events (Down/Up) 58798 /8

Looking at the stats now with just the laptop connected via wifi and it runs fine all the time;

Line attentuation 40.5 dB / 21.8 dB
Noise Margin 6.1 dB / 4.1 dB
FEC Events (Down/Up) 1391/4
CRC Events (Down/Up) 0/1

My downstream is 9029 and upstream is 1040.

Just wondering why, when ethernet is being used that I see these higher values?

I've installed the latest Intel drivers for the card and it ran a series of checks where is measured the length of ethernet cable and quality of connectors and it reported it as very good so no problems there.
 
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I can't believe this ... I've just gone and bought a Netgear N150, which connects to my HH3 wirelessly just fine but again, I can't connect to the internet. It also takes down the broadband connection. If I shut off the desktop PC, the broadband light comes back on. Fire up the laptop and its all fine. What on earth is going on?
 
Well - its sorted now. I honestly can't remember what resolved it. BT flushed the lines whatever that means, I changed the machine name to something else, then changed it back again and changed one of the BIOS settings for plug and play to No instead of yes. Can't remember what it was supposed to be but I have re-set BIOS settings a number of times.

When I booted from ubuntu 11 liveCD before all of this all was well so it was something screwy with windows and/or my bios. Anyhow, up and running with Windows 7 64-bit now :)
 
Went back to the original problem again a few days later. After many painful weeks of investigation, it was determined that they (BT) had accidentally put a cap of 7-14MB on my line, which it can't handle. They have finally put a cap of 5-6MB and it's been stable for a while now.
 
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