Slowdown and freezing experienced on home network

[josbd]

We are running four pcs on a home network. The main pc is XP, the other three W2KPro. Set up is cable bb, four port hub, and is wired. Two of the W2K pcs are experiencing slow downs, and freezing, very reminiscent of the old days of MSN, when you would type, and nothing would appear for several minutes. Anyone have any suggestions as to how to remedy this, and would a router improve the whole set up?

Cheers!

 

[Nodsu]

You probably already have a router somewhere or otherwise only one of the PCs could access the internet at the same time.

If you are really using a hub (are you sure? A hub, a switch and a router are very different devices!) then you could try setting the link speed and duplex manually. You have to set half duplex and maybe 10Mbit/s if you are indeed using a hub.

 

[josbd]

I apologise, you are quite right (I know nothing!) it is a switch.

 

[tom_pearson]

You will deffinatly benefit from a router as I expect at the moment you have the internet connection shared from one main system (internet server) would this be your XP machine??? It is probably slow because the network traffic for the internet all gets sent through the main computer and as this computer is being used for lot's of other things at the same time there may be a lot of interuptions in the traffic (causing the systems to hang). A router takes care of all this traffic as a dedicated system so there are no underlaying processes being executed to interfear with the network. you will notice a massive increase in internet speed too.

hope this helps.

tom

p.s. a switch just means that systems with different standards of network cards can connect to each other. where as a hub is a standard specific piece of equipment e.g. a switch can cater for 10mbp/s and 100mbp/s speeds and switch between them. a hub would just use either 10/100/1000 + mbp/s speeds only

 

[josbd]

Awwwww Cheers Tom! A great explanation, and that certainly sounds like it is the case. Yep, the XP is the main machine, and hopefully the router will make all the difference.

Thanks both very much indeed.

 

[tom_pearson]

No probs


:grinthumb