I’m having a problem with my router. Pages on the internet refuse to load, timeout, or go very slow. The same happens when I try and connect to the router’s admin page, so it’s not the internet. No other computers on the network are having this problem. I’ve tried connecting to the router via a wireless connection and a wired connection and the problem persists. I have Windows Firewall turned off, and no other firewalls.
Any idea what the problem is?
Am I understanding you correctly that other computers have no issue with that router?
If so, the next step is to test whether that particular computer can connect to another router (wirelessly or via wire).
Also, try connecting the computer directly to the cable/dsl modem.
It turns out the problem has spread to the other computers. Everyone is having problems now.
Like I said, I have difficulty opening the router’s admin page with my browser. I presume it’s possible for routers to degrade, rather than just be operable/inoperable.
Edit: Powercycled and reset the router (little button that needs a pin to push it in.) And it seems to be ok. I did that as well a few hours ago and it got better for a while, but degraded again. I figure I’m going to need a new router.
Can anyone advise on the benefits of an N router over a G router?
If you held the pin in for any length of time when you powered the router back up you are probably doing the ‘hard reset’ and you may not have really wanted or needed that. I’m generalizing and I don’t know for a fact that this is the case with your particular router.
Can you verify that the router (also your LAN Gateway) can be reached or at least pinged? I’m going to assume that you have indeed done a hard reset but that your ISP’s defaults are fine with DHCPing the WAN side.
At your computer, bring up the DOS box (Start - Run - “cmd”)
at a command line type in “ipconfig” (w/o quotes btw)
look for your working ethernet or wireless adapter; it will have an IP address line (that’s you), a subnet mask (ignore) and the address for a Default Gateway - take that down.
next type “ping nnn.nnn.n.n” where the n’s are the Gateway address. Do you or don’t you get a response like ‘Reply from … time = 2ms …’ or is it saying that everything it sent to that address was lost?
If it wasn’t already the address you were using to get on your router’s admin console try typing in “http://nnn.nnn.n.n” to your browser’s address bar and see if it prompts for a name and password. If it doesn’t respond to the name and password you thought it was see if you can figure out what the default (out of the box) ones were… typically “admin” and “password” or both “admin” or “blank” for the password; that kind of thing.
Yeah, I had tried all that. When I pinged the router (I did it a couple of times) I was getting a mix of 1ms repsonses, some up in the high numbers, and some lost packets. When I accessed the router’s admin page, it was generally slow and sometimes timed out or the graphics didn’t load.
Since then the problem spread to other computers. So I reset the router again, and this cured it. (I reset it by doing the power cycle while holding down the reset button.) This gave me access to the admin page on the router. I saw a computer on it, that no-one in the family said was theirs. So I’ve blacklisted the mac address and I’ll see if someone mentions their internet not working. In the meantime, I’m going to believe we were being hacked. This shouldn’t be the case as someone would have to sit in our garden with a laptop, as that’s as far as the wireless extends.
Although it could just be the router dying, and a friend of my siblings computer who visited with their computer still showing up, as the more likely case.
Gotcha.
Just so we’re clear, the ‘hard reset’ should only be used as a last resort and almost inevitably you have to go back in and set up all of your WAN, LAN and wireless settings as it wipes them all back to default. Generally after a hard reset you would not even be able to get back on the internet without some initial configuration so when you say that you did this and it cured it I’m a bit confused unless you’re leaving those steps out.
All in all, if you’ve had the router for any length of time it is probably time for a new one it sounds like.