Vista - New Wireless Connection - Odd Internet...

Hi,

I am hoping one of you super techy guys can help me out here. I have an Asus P5K Deluxe/Wifi-AP and this weekend got myself a Logitech/Slim Devices Squeezebox3 for my music pleasure.

It was a bit of a b*tch to set up but once I had it working perfectly from the PC <> Wifi side of things and the Squeezebox was happy I noticed something very, very odd with my Internet connection.

Every few hours, its happened about 4 times over the weekend my Internet connection just dies (or seems to, let me explain further).

Web browsing fails, Firefox, IE etc nothing will connect to the web and I can't even get to my routers admin pages.

Windows seems to think there is no problem.

Bittorrent dies, but IM (MSN and ICQ) and Logmein and a few other programs which are already connected carry on working fine. If I disconnect them, they then will fail to connect. MSN seems to do a diagnostic and finds everything find accept "port access" as though it can''t access a certain port.

If I open a command prompt, I can still ping both IP addresses and hostnames on the local network and the internet, I just can't seem to establish new connections with anything. Ping will work flawlessly though.

If I reboot the PC, all is well again.

Does anyone have any idea whats going on? Its obviously due to the new Wifi adition but I am not sure why, something due to Internet connection sharing maybe? (as the Squeezebox can access Internet Radio and the Squeezenetwork).

I had a bit of a search on the old google and people where mentioning DNS problems but I don't think thats an issue as I can ping IPs and Hosts fine. I can even ping my ethernet router fine. So I thinking it is something to do with Internet Connection Sharing on the LAN adapter.

Any ideas people.

Thanks,

Mike

I'm confused.

You mention a router and internet connection sharing.

Why would you be using ICS if you have a router?

Until I got to the bit about rebooting the PC fixing it I was going to say it looks similar to the problem a lot of routers get with P2P, where the router has a brain fart due to too many connections.

Hi,

The router (is only a single port ethernet modem really, Zyxel 660 so I should have called it that. apologies).

The wifi adapter is onboard my motherboard so the wifi adapter uses the lan connection to the dsl modem to get its internet connection, hence ICS is on.

Cheers,

Mike

PS: the internet was still working this morning, so I am doubly confused as to whats going on now. I wonder if it only does it if I have been using the wifi connection to the PC for a while. More testing is needed..

Is the motherboards built-in LAN adapter an Attansic 1Gb by any chance? As i have had this exact issue with every ASUS board that has used that adapter. the only way i was able to get round the issue was to install a cheap pci network card and disable the Attansic one.

The Motherboard has:

1 x Marvell88E8056

Thanks for the tip.

The Motherboard has:

1x Marvell88E8056

Edited by deleted (Mon 11-Jun-07 12:20:07)

It could be that Vista is getting confused with 2 network connections and is attempting to force the web requests via the incorrect interface.

You need to check that Vista knows that the wireless connection is 'Local Only' (all web requests then get sent via the wired connection).

Failing that, you can try changing the Interface Metric (higher numbers = higher priority) on the wired connection..

Hi,

Thanks for the response, I think Vista knows that the Wifi connection is Local only, it seems to say as much in the Networking centre.

With regards to the interface metric, can you explain a bit more about it please and tell me how I go about doing it?

Thanks,

Mike

The Interface Metric is used in machines that have multiple network connections and is used by Windows to determine which connection to route traffic on. To override the default setting, each network connection must be modified.

Open 'Network and Sharing Centre'. Click on 'Manage Network Connections'. Right-click the connection, select Properties. Select 'Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)' from the list and click the Properties button. In the Properties box, click the Advanced button. At the bottom of the screen, there is a check-box for 'Automatic Metric' with a text box underneath. Switching off the check-box enables the text box. Any number you like, as long as it is higher than the number you insert into the wireless connection.

As an example, on my laptop, I have wired, wireless and 3G/HSDPA.
Wired setting: 4255
Wireless setting: 4250
3G/HSDPA: Automatic

These were not set by me, but by Vista (XP was always Automatic, IIRC).

Thanks, I will check it out.

Its definately something to do with the ICS or Wireless adition. I came home from work, put the Squeezebox on and listened to music for an hour and when I came on the PC and tried to do anything with the net, I got the same time out.

I then disabled the ICS on the LAN and it all came back to life again, trouble is if I now try and re-enable the ICS I lose the internet again.

Odd indeed.

I have now put the Metric stuff on and will reboot in a moment and see if that works.

Edit: hmm with Metric set I got the internet back, but it was after 10 mins or so so not sure it was coincidence or not, the machine seemed to flick into "Windows Classic" theme and back to "Aero". I am so confused..

lol

Cheers,

Mike

Edited by deleted (Mon 11-Jun-07 19:44:26)