Sudden huge packet loss. Router problem?

[pmd]

I'm using an iBook running OS X 10.3.4, connected via wireless to a Linksys BEFW11S4 router, to a standalone cable modem on ntl in Cambridge.

Last Thursday night my connection suddenly virtually disappeared, and pinging www.ntlworld.com was showing 80% packet loss.

I ran ntl support on Saturday and was told it was a problem in my area and there was no estimated time for a fix. By Tuesday, with it still not working, I rang ntl support again.

This time, they said my line was fine, and there were no problems in my area! The tech suggested connecting directly to the router with a cable. This fixed the problem - no packet loss. So it's my router? Connecting to the router via a cable wasn't working, so it's not a wireless problem.

I power cycled the router, reset it, put new firmware on it. Nothing helped. Just to repeat, it suddenly went - I was about 3 minutes into a streaming Quicktime presentation. I hadn't changed anything for days, if not weeks.

Yesterday (wednesday) morning, I put it all back to how it was (wireless to router, to cable modem). Huge packet loss still. I closed the laptop, putting it to sleep, and went to work.

I came home in the evening, opened the laptop, and pinged www.ntlworld.com again. Perfect connection, 0% packet loss! So what's going on?

Two hours later, the problem reappeared. Again, connecting to the cable modem directly removes the problem. The weird thing is, the connection went when I was attemping watch the same streaming movie. :-(

Booting the laptop from a Firewire drive containing a clone I made of my system disk a couple of weeks ago shows the same problem, so it's not something I've unwittingly done to my iBook's OS.

I've reset everything numerous times, changed the ethernet cable between the modem and the router, wiggled the connections. Nothing. My next step is to borrow an identical router and another iBook and try them.

Can anyone suggest anything else? I'm really at a loss here.

[Chris W]

are you using p2p software, or will there be a large number of simultaneous connections going through the router, as i know this can cause problems with some linksys routers.

[pmd]

Originally Posted by monkeybreath

are you using p2p software, or will there be a large number of simultaneous connections going through the router, as i know this can cause problems with some linksys routers.

No, I'm not. Nothing but Mail, a browser, iChat and an RSS reader are running. And nothing that I haven't been running for weeks. I have a thing called MenuMeters (which I installed to check bandwidth after the problem started) in my OS X menu bar that shows incoming and outgoing rates, and when the problem is occurring I see downloads of about 30 bytes/sec, and 0 bytes/sec transmit. :-(

This problem has been happening for nearly a week (apart from the 2 hours on wednesday night when it fixed itself briefly).

Even our network infrastructure and security manager at work (for the UK branch of a huge multinational technology company) is puzzled by this

[Chris W]

hmm... i am puzzled as well

will go and scratch my head for a bit and will post back if i think of something. If you come up with anything else then let me know!

MB

[OL1V3R]

Originally Posted by monkeybreath

hmm... i am puzzled as well

will go and scratch my head for a bit and will post back if i think of something. If you come up with anything else then let me know!

MB

Whats your connection strength between the Lappy and the router ?

It *might* be the anntena or something.

[pmd]

Originally Posted by OL1V3R

Whats your connection strength between the Lappy and the router ?

It *might* be the anntena or something.

Signal strenght is fine. But the problem occurs if I never put wireless into the equation. If I plug the laptop into the router with an ethernet cable the problem still occurs.

And that ethernet cable is the same one I use when directly connecting to the cable modem, so I know that it's not a duff cable further confusing matters

You can ping your router and an internet address at the same time to see if the communication break is between laptop --> router or router --> internet. tracert will also identify what isnt routing.

[pmd]

I never did work out what suddenly went wrong with the Linksys router.

This week I bought a new 3com router (3Com 3CRWE53172 OfficeConnect 11Mbps Wireless Broadband Router), swapped the Linksys one out, and everything's back to normal.

The 3com is much smaller than the Linksys, has a nicer setup system and has a 'lifetime' warranty. Linksys only give a 1 year warranty.

[level]

did you (or your neighbor) have A wireless phone 2.4GHZ ?

if so it may be the case.
when ever i picked up my wireless phone ,i had simptoms like this.

i changed the gateway CHANNEL of the gateway
and every thing was back to normal.