Networking Help Please!

edwardo · 12-04-2007, 16:01

First off hello to everyone here. I'm a new Virgin Media customer having switched from Zen Internet and so far am not having much joy.

My setup is as follows:
We have a SA Modem attached to a Linksys WRK54G router (this however is being changed tonight for a different router). Attached to the router are 1 desktop PC (hardwired) running XP, 1 desktop Mac running OSX 10.3.9 (hardwired) and also 1 laptop PC running XP (wireless).

The problem we are having is that if just the desktop PC and Mac are connected the internet will work intermittently, I.E. we will be connected for any length of time from 1 minute to 1 hour before the connection will die for some time and then start working again. This is especially annoying when I'm playing internet poker and the connection dies!

We've tried using both static and dynamic IP addresses which makes no difference. So if both of these are up and running on the internet (albeit intermittently) and we try to introduce the laptop into the equation everything dies until we reset the router. Also if we have both hardwired machines on the internet and I open Bittorrent on the Mac the internet will stop working on both machines (this is whilst using static IP addresses for each machine and with port forwarding turned on on the router).
If just one computer is connected directly to the modem the connection works perfectly and the speed is great so I'm guessing it is a router issue or a conflict between the Mac and PCs.

So I suppose my questions are:
Does anyone have any experience of using Macs and PCs with a router on Virgin Media?
Can it be done?
Any advice?
I'm hoping the new router will solve the problem as I've been told the Linksys is a bit sketchy with Macs & PCs etc...

Any advice greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
Edward

MovedGoalPosts · 12-04-2007, 16:06

You shouldn't need to be using static IPs. Let the router do the job and just open the necessary port to allow your torrents. However your torrents will do their best to overwhelm your router and connection unless you keep them on a very tight leash. Throttle back the upload bandwidth and minimise the number of connections. Many of the Linksys routers have a "feature" in the firmware that doesn't work too well with torrents in that it's maintains connections over the net for a long while. Torrents throw out loads of connections, and so the router ends up overloaded. Third party firmware can help resolve that.

edwardo · 12-04-2007, 17:04

Thanks for the reply Rob, so you would recommend not using static IPs? Bittorrent also stops any webbrowsers from working even if it is not downloading/uploading anything (i.e the speeds are 0kbs), this also happens when not using static IPs.
And have you got any ideas why the connection keeps cutting out intermittently and shutting off completely when the laptop is turned on?
I'm hoping getting the new router tonight will sort out some of the problems.
Cheers
Ed

MovedGoalPosts · 12-04-2007, 17:25

As far as I'm aware the WRK is a lightweight router, compared to the WRT series. That could be a part of the problem. I've never used static IPs on my networks always allowing the router to do the work with everything set to autodetect. If the torrent is throwing out loads of connections it could stifle other traffic.

If you want to prove the broadband is OK, then try with just one PC connected direct to the modem, no router. Then you will know where to look.