Yawn*belkin probs :S

shamoan · 04-05-2006, 19:43

hello to all,
I am in desperate need of some advice to help resolve a router issue.I am with ntl and have been for about 5 years gone through all the free upgrades 1 meg to 3 meg etc etc... I share the connection with 2 other pc's in my home which are solely used for online gaming ie: counterstrike, halflife 2 and so on, but prior to the 10 meg upgrade the connection would handle 3 or 4 pc's playing the same game at the same time, but the 10 meg line does'nt seem to be capable of supporting 2 pc's let alone 3 or 4, i have tried everything possible and tried to investigate why this is happening but to no avail, so last week i decided to by a new router Belkin F5D7231-4 and still i have the same problems when a 3rd pc tries to connect to the game the internet connection either drops out or we see a error message in game cl_flushentitypacket, this will stay till either one of us decides to drop from the game, I cant understand what seems to be the problem, counterstrike requires an upstream of a maximum of 7kbs per player i have almost 60k at my disposal, I would be most gratefull if anyone could shed some light on this for me. Id also like to add that all three pc's are connected to the router via ethernet cable and not wireless.

thanks in advance

Stuart · 04-05-2006, 19:51

to CableForum.

I don't really play PC games online much, so probably won't be much help.

How is your router connected to the Internet? STB or Cable Modem?

shamoan · 04-05-2006, 19:57

hello again,
thankyou for the welcome my friend, my router is connected to the internet via an ntl 250 cable modem, if thats any help to you

TuF-Girl · 06-05-2006, 12:19

hiya ..
im having the same trouble as you are right now, for the last 3 years my husband and i have shared a pc, but last weekend we bought a 2nd pc and router, the Belkin f5d5231-4 wired router. and i use ethernet cables to connect the pcs to the router
We play unreal tournament 2004 online, and every 5 mins the connection drops..only for a few seconds, quit game and go straight back in, no rebooting necessary. When browsing inet or using msn no probs.
I called belkin and they told me to dl doctor tcp and enter the MTU number in the settings, ntl wernt very happy giving me this number but in the end told me it was 1,500...although i think thats a defauly number not actually the correct number for my 10 mg connection.
i did what i was told and now the connection is dropping every 2 mins..im begining to think sharing a pc was less hassel, (more arguing tho )

any help would be greatful
emma

James79 · 06-05-2006, 21:01

Im also having problems with my wireless router.

Without fail, I notice that the connection drops out and the wireless router reboots (the connection light flashes then becomes static - then the connection is reinstated). These reboots are not equi-distant, ie they can happen immediately after a re-connection or can happen every couple of hours. It would appear to me that the router is trying to attain a new MAC Address or something when it reboots, but Im not sure.

I also have a Belkin F5D7231-4P Router (with built in Print Server and also allows wireless printing). It is connected to a Terajet Cable Modem via RJ45. The Main PC is connected via ethernet cable and a Laptop connects via wireless.

Im at a loss as to what is causing this or how it can be stopped. So, hopefully some nice helpful person could give a bit of advice!!??

James

Talifer · 11-05-2006, 13:59

I am having a similar problem to the above posters.
I too have gone through the various upgrade processes since way back when and I never used to get this problem. I must have been using the same modem, router and PCs for 2 years now (Yes my PCs need an upgrade

). I don't know when the problems really began but it must have been around the time the connection went to 10M, lately however the problem has escalated.
Since about the time of the 10M upgrade I have had intermitent lag spikes, lasting maybe 3-5 seconds, this would be irritating but games were still playable it usually wasn't enough to kill the game connection. These spikes have been happening for months now, but lately they've turned into a serious problem causing all machines (between 1 and 3 at any time) to lose connection to the game servers completely. The spikes have also increased in frequency, it's now got to the point where you can only play for 20 minutes then you're gone.
I've been trying to work out where the problem lies and have set up various network configurations.
My original setup was as follows

NTL 120 Modem -> linksys BEFSR31 v2 router -> PCs

This is where the problem first appeared. At that time I aquired a wireless enabled laptop and an XBox so took the opportunity of replacing the router with a wireless version to allow these devices to connect and maybe fix the network problem:-

NTL 120 Modem -> linksys WRT55AG wireless router -> PCs

This made no difference and the problem persisted, the issue then became a real problem with link deaths so I decided to buy a different router brand to make sure there wasn't a common fault with the linksys stuff:

NTL 120 Modem -> Belkin F5D5231uk4 router -> PCs

This did not fix the problem but did something different, with the linksys router I had to force it to renew it's IP (DHCP address) before the connection would come back up, the Belkin recovered by iteself. I then tried

NTL 120 Modem -> USB PC

No problem here.

NTL 120 Modem -> Ethernet PC

Didn't see an problem here also
That's when I called tech support. From what I could understand (quiet line/operator and an indian accent made him very, very hard to understand) the test revealed no problem with the modem, as far as the operator was concerned that was it, not his problem. So I called customer support to get a modem upgrade, got a much more friendly Scottish guy, from reading these forums I was expecting a fight to get an upgrade but he checked my account (Not phoned them in 4-5 years

) and booked an engineer to replace my modem. This was completed this week, so now

NTL 250 Modem -> Belkin F5D5231uk4 router -> PCs

Problem still occurs

I needed a solution badly at this point because I couldn't really do anything, so I replaced the router with a laptop instead.

NTL 250 Modem -> USB Laptop (Running ICS) -> Ethernet 10/100M switch -> PCs

This works fine, no lag spikes and this is the point I'm at now, what the hell is going on? It seems a lot of people are having similar router problems.

In brief (for those who don't want to read all of the above)
The modem has been replaced, the router has been replaced twice, I'm using upto 6 different PCs, but the network consistently periodically losses connection (Not the modem, it's lights always look good). The problem occurs with any number of PC on the router (tried with one/two/three, physically connected), but the modem to USB connection seems fine. What's going wrong between the modem and the router? I've not messed with anything everything is out of the box default.
I'll gladly run any tests, configuration or settings you can suggest that might help resolve this problem.
Thanks

Talifer

Talifer · 16-05-2006, 13:54

OK I found out what my problem was, I'll post it here and it might help others.

None of the routers I've tested in the above post can cope with 10MB on the WAN port. If you have a 10MB connection make sure your router explicitly states that the WAN port (not just the PC ports) can cope with 10/100MB or says something like "fast ethernet", otherwise the router with have a fit now and then.

Talifer