At the end of my rope. Please Help

[MBowser]

I've spent countless hours trying to resolve the following problem.

After about 20-30 minutes of bandwidth usage I always disconnect suddenly. It stops my downloads, kicks me out of gaming servers, and halts streaming video.

The connection quickly re-establishes itself moments later, with no notification that it ever disconnected.

I've done all of the obvious recommended steps:

-I've updated the firmware on EVERYTHING. Modem, Router, COMM Ports, you name it.

-Disabled Firewalls to see if I still have a problem.

-System Restored.

-I've played around with nearly every setting possible in any menu. (I.e. the modem/router device manager advanced options, and the router's main page)

-I've run virus scans and spyware scans so brutally that they come up with nothing now.

-I've disabled TCP/IP Offloading

-I've lowered my MTU

-I've made sure that no dubious software was installed.

Some things I've done to try and diagnose the problem:

I pinged google in the command prompt for a while and watched it one of the times I disconnected. It returns a Request Timeout.

I've run programs like Wireshark and Colasoft Capsa:

-Wireshark returns "Destination Unreachable (Port Unreachable)" Whenever the problem occurs and rarely, a "Malformed Packet" error.

-Colasoft Capsa constantly spams "Port Unreachable" and Checksum Errors.

I have a Linksys WRT54GL Router, With a Arris TM502G Modem, running comcast high speed cable on Windows XP. My comp is plugged in directly to the router.

What in god's name could be the problem? And what can I do short of buying new hardware or reformatting?

Please Help .

 

[mica3speedy]

have a friend bring over a laptop and see if their machine does the same thing. If not, then try a different ethernet card. If it does, replace the router.

 

[DelJo63]

1) leave the FW active
2) plug directly to the modem

find your ISP gateway with the above configuration; should be the Gateway address show by run->cmd /k ipconfig /all

now run ping -t $theGatewayIPaddress

then start your Internet access and make sure you keep track of what you are doing
when the 'connection drops'

• if the internet is dropped and the ping shows Request Timeout on the ISP gateway,
  then you truly lost ALL Internet access
• if ping is NOT showing Request Timeout, then you've lost routing to the service you were accessing.

if (b) then

kill the ping ( <ctl>c)
get your connection active again
use pathping whateverDomainName
then resume the Internet activity that was dropped
​

if the pathping reports before the service is lost, just restart it until the service is lost and await the pathping results

NOW THEN, pathping will show you where the disconnect occurred.