On 9 December 2013 20:50, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
It could be Wifi problem, or perhaps a DNS problem. In a mixed O/S environment it could be something like different machines fighting to be the DNS browse master. I've had this in the past - symptoms, basically, every now and again, nothing works for a little while. What do you do about DNS and or DHCP?
DHCP is dished out by the router, including DNS settings which I usually override to give 8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4 but since the reset haven't done so I guess they'll either be the router's IP or a Virgin one.
However the symptoms include not being able to ping 8.8.8.8 so DNS shouldn't be an issue (and for that matter it's normally noticed when navigating pages of a website, eg sending an email via webmail, where the DNS should already be cached by the browser).
Could be. Perhaps try with any microwaves off, baby monitors off, TV senders, USB, Sonos, Bluetooth or any other transmitters off. Any better?
None of those on in my own house except maybe bluetooth, although of-course I can't vouch for the neighbours. The house is detached but it's only ~2m to the nearest neighbour.
Use 144Mbps or perhaps 54Mbps not 300.
Virgin's engineer knocked it down to 54Mbps (or at least that's what he said he did, I haven't looked at the settings).
Greenfield mode: Off
Never heard of this one, will check but what is it?
WPA2-PSK if at all possible [probably AES]
Should only be WPA2-PSK (everything that's using wifi should be using it but it might be that the router would allow alternatives).
Firewall on at Low if you run any internet facing servers, higher if not.
Only firewall is whatever the router has (generally relying on NAT apart from that).
Ping returns an error code, so if it doesn't work, you can run a command, or vice versa
Good point, I didn't think about using ping itself.
I'd be tempted to try some tracerts with both a URL and an IP address when the problem exists, and see if you get a complete routing failure with both indicating a wifi or network failure, or only with the URL indicating an internal DNS problem. Also it could reveal if the internal network is OK by tracing as far only as the router and no further.
I always test using ping to 8.8.8.8 so I'm pretty sure DNS isn't relevant. Last time it happened my desktop (cabled connection) was still able to access the Internet through the router ruling out a lost Internet connection, and I have now had one occasion where my wife's laptop lost connection (Win8) but my Linux laptop was still connected fine. The wife's laptop is brand new (arrived yesterday) so its the first time I've been able to test from two laptops simultaneously. Worth noting that the only way to get it to work again on the Win8 laptop was disconnect from the wifi network and re-connect.
Good luck.
Thanks, I think I'm going to need it!