1/3/15 8:11 PM

Some of you may remember my wireless router saga from three weeks ago, and my report that all was sorted out. A short summary: one wireless router didn't play nice (download speeds roughly 1/5 what they should be but upload speeds right on spec.) with my cable & phone Arris modem but worked fine with my mother in laws Cisco cable modem. My solution was to use the router that did work well and call it a day, giving my MIL the router that wouldn't work with my modem.

Now the saga continues. Once we got the router swap done we started having 2 minute blackouts several times per day. Total loss of signal (page not found errors for any web page). So the conclusion was that the cable/phone modem was faulty. Cable company swapped the modems and all was good. The Netgear wireless router that didn't ever see more than 10 Mbps download speed with the old cable modem now saw 40+ on my 5 year old laptop and 50+ on my wife's year old MacBook Pro.

Then I started noticing a slowdown that would be fixed with a reboot of my laptop. With each reboot speed was restored, but would decay exponentially with a half life of about 45 minutes (20 Mbps after 45 minutes, 10 Mbps after 1.5 hrs, etc.). I've checked this repeatedly and it makes no difference whether the laptop is working or just sitting there with no programs opened.

My wife's MacBook doesn't experience this so it is something with my laptop. Any ideas?

1/3/15 8:41 PM

Does you laptop's throughput decays the same way when connected directly to the router via ethernet?

1/3/15 8:48 PM

quote:

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Does you laptop's throughput decays the same way when connected directly to the router via ethernet?

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1/4/15 9:26 AM

Are you using the latest Wi-Fi adapter driver update for your laptop?

On the Windows laptop, also try the Performance troubleshooter:
Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Troubleshooting > Network and Internet


Your description clearly indicates a problem with the laptop, only. That said, if you are not absolutely 100% sure that is the case, I would try the following..

Have you installed or are using the latest manufacturer firmware for the router? Even a fresh out of the box router may need an update.

When I used Linksys & Belkin routers in the past, I would have them reboot once a day, overnight, using a an inexpensive outlet timer device I purchased at a hardware store. That application was to solve a lack of connectivity issue (completely lacking).

Doing such may solve the problem with bad memory management by the **current** router firmware. Basically whenever router needs to have lots of connections open, it in turn, consumes more RAM, which is normal. When a connection is closed, that RAM should be freed up. It looks like in your case it isn't. As router has less and less RAM available, it becomes slower and slower and in the end you have to reboot it. When it is rebooted, contents of the memory are cleared and you have fresh memory to use.

1/4/15 10:04 AM

i do same, set to shut down routers & modem every night at 3am to freshen everything up.

1/4/15 8:13 PM

I do reboot the router every day (power it down overnight) but not the modem. The cable company tells me they do their upgrades in the middle of the night and so the modem should stay on.

I have Windows update on automatic so I assume the WiFi adapter driver is up to date. I will check that. Performance troubleshooter found no issues. The router has the latest firmware (out of the box it was up to date).

I agree that the problem appears to be laptop related. Per April's great suggestion, I hooked an Ethernet cable from the router to my laptop and disconnected from the wireless signal. Speed went from 40 to 65 Mbps, but the same phenomenon occurs - steadily dropping connection speed through the day - down to 7 Mbps after 14 hours. My wife's MacBook connection speed (through the wireless router) remains the same. Rebooting my laptop restores speed to 65. I didn't try just shutting down IE and restarting it, but in the past that has not resolved Internet speed issues. I think I will try using Chrome for a day and see if that changes anything (should sort out whether it is a computer or browser issue).

1/4/15 9:16 PM

As in the previous thread/suggestions. Have you turned off power saving mode to the NIC, and or turned the power settings for while plugged in settings to 'not do' any hibernation or controlling of the NIC.

NIC=Network Interface Card, on board and not a card in your lap top most probably...

1/4/15 11:06 PM

You've isolated the problem to your laptop.

You've got a few things to try to isolate to the part of the laptop.

Have you tried re-installing the network card driver? (it's probably not the wifi card since the problem exist even when connected directly)

1/5/15 6:05 PM

My cable company told me that to fully reset a cable modem they suggest removing the coax cable also, for a minute. Has anyone else heard of this?

1/5/15 7:33 PM

If it's a bad network card, just pick up a USB wireless adapter. They have nano ones that don't stick out much. About $15 online.

1/5/15 10:36 PM

quote:

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My cable company told me that to fully reset a cable modem they suggest removing the coax cable also, for a minute. Has anyone else heard of this?

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1/6/15 6:39 AM

...as it doesn't supply any power. It makes you wonder about some tech support people...

1/6/15 8:16 AM

What we teach our students is, just like a garden hose and water, to disconnect the cable and shake the end to get rid of any stray electrons.

Perhaps that's what tech. support was thinking.......

1/6/15 8:44 AM

just in case the line is not properly grounded.

i've had fleeting modem issues in the past that were in fact cleared up by simply unplugging and grounding the coax then reconnecting!

1/6/15 12:24 PM

Walter's post reminded of a situation where I had a ground issue. I ran a secondary ground to the outer co-ax at the device and it resolved an issue. That was before wireless, but it stopped me having to restart the cable modem continually. Which I still think of as a router. Being modem means modulate/demodulate and we don't do that, nor multiplexing much these days nor have done for quite a while. ;)

1/6/15 8:23 PM

quote:

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Have you tried re-installing the network card driver? (it's probably not the wifi card since the problem exist even when connected directly)

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1/6/15 10:58 PM

I'm on an older machine. I see the NIC in the "Hardware" section of Control Panel.

You may also need to turn on the "Show Hidden Device" option, depending on the version of Windows you're on.

1/7/15 4:59 AM

Kerry:

1. What computer and what version of Windows are you using? If it isn't Windows, what is it? If it is...

2. Try this:

a. Reboot the machine
b. Log in
c. Run Task Manager
d. Record everything--not just the network. How busy is the CPU?
e. Leave it running
f. Come back in an hour or so and see if CPU use or memory use is up.
g. If it is, what's using it?

There are lots of background services, etc., that can eat CPU cycles. These sorts of things can contribute to slowing a machine over time.

1/7/15 8:06 PM

Laptop is a 2010 Dell Inspiron running Win7.

I've looked at the resource monitor when lots of things are running and the big resource hog seems to be IE11. Not clear if it is specific sites or just the program. I've had a few incidents recently when the machine has gotten super slow (had to force a shutdown earlier this week). I'm wondering if these are related. I'll try starting it up tomorrow and watch the resource monitor with no applications open.

Looking for the NIC I tried Device Manager from control panel - uner Network Adapters I see the Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6200 AGN. Is that the Network Interface Card?

1/7/15 9:17 PM

Your idea of testing the connection over time with a web browser other than IE is a good one, I think.

Off topic in somewhat related news is Microsoft is releasing a new web browser soon, called Spartan. It looks true to its name. I think it will coexist with Internet Exploder, er um Explorer.

1/7/15 9:21 PM

What are you using to test through-put? A generic internet html app?

Like this one; http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

1/7/15 10:33 PM

"I think it will coexist with Internet Exploder, er um Explorer."

you mean Internet Exbloater? :D

1/8/15 8:09 AM

I have been wondering if your issues are CPU rather than NIC related. If the machine is getting busy over time (or memory is being overloaded over time) that could explain slowdowns even if your networking stuff is fine.

It might be something other than IE, or it might be IE, but my guess is that you're getting lots of copies of something running, stealing cycles and memory over time.

BTW, folks, IE is really not that bad these days--personally, I prefer Firefox for just about everything, but IE is like that tire jack that comes with your car. If you need it, it's there.

1/8/15 8:26 AM

We had a very similar issue. After much diagnosing and the tech people were no help on this one, I discovered that the electrical circuit the cable modem was plugged into was not properly grounded. After a while (15-30 minutes) the tv s (even when off) would build up enough back flow to trip the breaker in either the router or the modem itself (varied randomly between the two). The charge actually fed back through the coaxial cable, not the electrical cable.

Surge protector made no difference.

I discovered the problem when I touched the coaxial cable and got shocked.

I fixed the ground in the plug and the problem went away. I also grounded the coaxial cable for good measure.

1/8/15 7:32 PM

Good one, April!