Internet Help

[Tbone]

So I have a gaming laptop. It's actually better than the desktop I use. But I haven't been able to use it at home for months. Here's my problem.

My laptop won't connect to my wireless router. If I take the laptop anywhere else, it connects to any other network just fine. Any other device connects to my router just fine. But try combining the two, and they won't stay connected.

It basically won't authenticate, and if it does, the DHCP Lease is automatically expired. I blame this on originally bridging my laptop to my Xbox in an attempt to piggyback internet to my Xbox. That worked for a time, but proved inconsistent, so I disconnected the two and bought a wireless adapter for my Xbox instead.

I've completely reset the router settings. I've completely uninstalled and reinstalled the wireless adapter for my computer. I've deleted the network profile. I've tried using a static IP. I've done all the /ipconfig release renew bullshit and nothing has fixed it. I'm changed my MAC address. Everything.

It's not my router because everything else connects to it just fine. It's not my computer because it connects to every other network just fine. Which leaves the question, WHAT THE HELL IS IT???

[Opey]

1) As a test, turn off WiFi and try a hardwire into your Router. If you get an IP and it sticks, then turn back on WiFi.
2) Update your WiFi bios, which you probably have done.
3) How close is your Laptop to the actual router. Try sitting next to the signal.
4) Some 'Wireless N' adapters are not dual band so you won't be able to connect to a full 5Ghz WiFi router. Try forcing a connection to your WiFi G - SSID on your network. I had this problem a long time ago when N came out.

[Tbone]

I got it connected by rebooting the router (it actually managed to fetch an IP this time). I'm worried that when the DHCP expires, though, it won't renew it. I set the lease time to the max limit, though, so that may be a month or so. The router is two floors up from me in someone's room, so it is really hard to find a time to experiment while wired.

[Tbone]

I'm still having this problem but now I have a more serious problem.

On my main rig (my desktop), if I try to download a torrent or stream media to my network, my internet slows down to nothing. The torrent will go down to 0 and the media will just buffer forever. A week ago this wasn't happening. Everything was running fine. For the past few year that I've lived here, I haven't had this problem with the internet. My Plex streaming (media streaming) was working for over a week before this started happening.

I first noticed it with my torrents. They suddenly would go down to 0 and my web browsing and everything else wouldn't work. It seems my router is just fine (trying to access internet on my other devices still work). Then I noticed that trying to stream media to my Xbox/Roku/anything else was just getting constant buffering. At first I thought it was Plex on the fritz, but then I noticed if I went back to my computer, I couldn't browse the internet or anything else. If I exit out of my torrent program or stop trying to stream, my internet kicks back to full.

The only clue I have so far is once when I was trying to exit out of my torrent client when it was hanging up like this, I got a BSOD that was "multiple_irp_connections". Obviously something's not working right, but I have been unable to fix it.

I've downloaded new drivers for my adapter, rebooted the router, tweaked my torrent settings, switched out USB ports for my network adapter, did some driver cleaners, reinstalled all my Plex software, tweaked my network settings, etc. etc. No luck. It's brought down my whole media playing system and now I have to babysit my torrents.

[Manic Velocity]

If I exit out of my torrent program or stop trying to stream, my internet kicks back to full.

It's possible your ISP could be throttling your traffic due to heavy bandwidth usage.  I know Comcast does this, so I have to set a cap on the up/down bandwidth on my torrents so as not to raise suspicion.

That shouldn't be the cause of your BSOD, though.  :\

[Tbone]

If this were the case, then my media streaming wouldn't also cause it. I don't use any internet bandwidth to stream from my PC to my Roku. That's all local, so even if I disconnected my router from the internet, I should still be able to do it, but this isn't the case. This narrows it down to a local problem - either my router or my adapter. It could be software, but it's happening with Plex AND uTorrent. Since my router seems to work fine when the network stops working, I'm assuming I can narrow it down to my desktop and my Belkin N+ adapter. There's still a possibility it's router-related, but nothing has really changed on that end.

It's also not consistent. Right now I'm downloading a file at 1.3MB/s and it shows no sign of slowing (I've done this test twice now without losing internet). I also had a span of about 15 minutes last night where I was able to stream uninterrupted. Both uTorrent and Plex try to open a large pipeline of d/ling and u/ling (uTorrent with multiple connections and I assume Plex is just one pipeline). The only other common denominator is that they are both accessing content on my external drive, but I don't think a drive error would cause my web browsing to slow as well.

[Longboard]

Have you ran any speed tests yet? Use www.speedtest.net and www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

Record your uploaded and download speed and your ping number. Test it on multiple sites around the US and see what your average might be.

Also, some cable companies "packet sniff" and strangle bandwidth when they think it is a torrent site.

[Tbone]

Yeah, when it hangs up, the speedtest either won't work or is really bad. I think the time I got it to run, it was like 1000 ping, .02 dl/ .03 ul.

The good news is I think I've fixed this issue. My roommate texted me that his Halo gaming was lagging when I was trying one of my stream tests, which made me think that it was actually the router and not my computer. I reset the router to factory default, set back up my basic SSID/password and, fingers crosses, everything seems to be running smoothly again (thank baby jesus). Right now I'm streaming the file that I began having this issue with on my Roku while my roommate is playing Halo on the Xbox and neither one of us are having performance issues at the moment (I'm also still able to do things like post on this forum). Here's hoping it was just some port forwarding issues on the router and my reset fixed it.

Now to see if that fixes my original problem of the laptop not connecting correctly...

[Tbone]

Resetting the router did NOT fix my laptop internet issue. Back to the drawing board on that one...

[Tbone]

Ok, I fixed my laptop internet issue by changing the SSID name of the wifi. This forced my laptop to stop using whatever settings it wouldn't stop using.

In other news, my weird torrent/streaming issue came BACK (after about 24 hours of working perfectly). I reset the router to defaults again, but I'm worried I'm going to have to do this every day until I determine what the cause is.

[Tbone]

Resetting the router this time does not appear to have fixed the problem. Sonofabitch..

Edit: Just got 3 MB/s dl and 100kb ul of a torrent with no problem. And I could browse while doing it without a slow down. All this right after my internet randomly dropped from the router. My testing is so inconsistent - it makes it really difficult to pinpoint the problem.

[Tbone]

Ok, I reset the router again, but this time I've set up another router as an access point. I've got all my media stuff connecting to that, and so far everything is fixed again. I'm being cautious about this being permanent, but so far my laptop is able to connect to it fine and I'm able to stream without any buffering. I'll post again if/when it all starts going to shit.

[Tbone]

My access point is streaming and downloading more steady, but it completely drops the internet at random every hour or so it seems. It usually comes back, but this last time both routers lost the connection. I had to reboot the main router twice and got internet back there, but my secondary router isn't able to get an IP address. I can't even access it remotely to reboot it (I'm not sure why I can't do that since I can still connect to the router). And of course it's in my roommate's room, so I can't reboot it manually.

The whole network is just a freakin nightmare...

[Tbone]

So I gave up on the access point, but the good news is that my main router seems to be functioning again. One of the odd fixes that I did was to disable the auto-update feature on Plex. After I did this, I haven't had the disconnects. I posted my solution on the Plex forums and other users are starting to report that this works for them as well. Hopefully my downloading/streaming problem is solved.

Now back to trying to connect my laptop to the router (it's once again not connecting)...

[Tbone]

Getting technical now. I found a random thread about Intel network cards and ARP offloading. Essentially, what might be happening, is when my laptop goes to sleep, the lease expires. Meanwhile another computer picks up that IP. Then my laptop wakes up and tries to get that ARP again, but it's returned with it being bad since the other computer now has it. My laptop gets stuck in a loop with that ARP until the router is reset.

I had to go into the fucking registry and disable ARP offload as a possible fix. I then reset my router to defaults and set everything up AGAIN. I'm connected again, but I don't anticipate this actually fixing my issue long term. I guess we'll see...I'm running out of options...