Internet connection mystery

Thought I would relate this sage of events as it may help others.

On Saturday I was happily using the internet when at 2pm I decided to go to the gym. On returning at 4pm I found I had no internet access. At first I thought it was an ISP outage, but further investigation showed that there was no problem here.

The Belkin router (150N) indicator lights showed there was no wired connection. I assumed it was a problem with the router and bought a new one, the Belkin 600N.

The new router came up with the same problem. I unplugged the Ethernet connection from my desktop and plugged it into the Ethernet port of my laptop and repeated the installation.

This again was reported as a failure. However, I noted that there was a connection and was able to access the router from the laptop and set up basic parameters.

I then attempted to restore a recently made backup of the configuration but to no avail as the new router did not recognise the back up made by the old router. Fortunately I had kept a record of the parameters so was able to use this to manually configure the new router.

There are a number of problems with the Belkin 600N and anyone thinking of buying it should google first, eg try Intellistream.

With the new router configured and successfully working for basic operations, I then plugged the Ethernet cable into the desktop only to discover the same problem!

The Ethernet port (RJ-45) is reported as working correctly and the link LED is blinking showing data activity and the speed LED is RED. The drivers are uptodate.

My next step will be to try a new LAN card in the PCI express port. Will let you now what happens.

Edited by Tantalus (Mon 28-Jul-14 21:29:32)

Had lightning in area?

Changed the Ethernet cable?

Does wireless work?

No lightening, although it has been very hot in London

Yes, I tried this earlier on. It should be noted that the existing cable works with the laptop.

Yes.

I thought you were in Sussex?

Did the 150N also work on wireless?

Edited by deleted (Mon 28-Jul-14 21:35:28)

I did not try it. However, I have been looking at the documentation for the LAN card, Atheros AR8121 PCI-E ethernet controller. The speed LED is RED. In the manual there are three settings: Off (10Mps); Orange (100Mps) and Green (1Gps). No mention of red.

Just been looking at possible replacements. OS is VISTA (32 bit).

Reconnected the cable to the desktop and then did a scan for hardware changes on the driver and the connection returned!

Light is still red.

I'm really not sure what is going on. But at least I have an internet connection for the moment....

Just had a look at the event log and I wonder whether this message have any thin to do with it:

NtpClient was unable to set a manual peer to use as a time source because of DNS resolution error on 'time.nist.gov,0x9'. NtpClient will try again in 15 minutes and double the reattempt interval thereafter. The error was: No such host is known. (0x80072AF9) - Thought I'd resolved this by setting clock to time.nist.gov

Edited by Tantalus (Mon 28-Jul-14 23:02:58)