[amjohnst]

I've been having an odd networking issue, and I'm hoping that someone with more networking knowledge and savvy than I might understand what's causing the problem.

I have a simple network at home. The DSL modem is plugged into a Linksys four port router. Connected to the router are a dual 1.8 G5, a Slingbox, my DirecTiVo box, and an Airport Extreme base station. About 60-70 percent of the time, everything works just fine.

Seemingly at random, however, I lose the internet connection to the G5 and Airport Extreme. From the networking pane of the system preferences, the G5 claims that it has a connection to the internet but nothing works -- no FTP, no web, nothing. The Airport Extreme base station also loses internet connectivity at the same time.

Must be the router, right? I'm not sure. Rebooting the router has no effect, even after leaving it powered down for several minutes. Nor does re-setting the router have any effect. I have a spare eight port router that I've tried when this happens but it doesn't work either (although it does work when I've tried using it on the network when everything is working perfectly).

Must be the DSL modem then, right? I don't think so. Whenever the internet drops out on the network, plugging the G5 directly into the DSL modem fixes everything -- at least for the G5 if not for the Slingbox, DirecTiVo, and Airport base station. Unfortunately, switching back to a connection through the router after some time directly connected to the DSL modem doesn't always restore things. Most of the time, I end up waiting for a few days before connecting through the router finally works.

Basically, I have no idea what's going on here, and after a lot of time searching the net and various forums, I'm still at a loss about what is causing the problem and what will fix it. Does anyone have any troubleshooting suggestions? I'm hoping that there might be something simple that I'm just missing.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[ghporter]

Try this: change which ports the G5 And AirPort Extreme are plugged into. It could simply be that the ports you're currently using are going bad-slowly. This does happen from time to time.

The second thing to try is o change the cables that go between the router and the G5 and AXBS. New cables, not used cables, should be used here. This will eliminate the possibility that your problems come from old and internally failing cables.

When you plug the G5 into the DSL modem, do you change the G5's network settings to use PPPoE? If you don't change anything and it "just works" it's possible that you're having problems because the G5 is intermittently trying to connect through your network. Your ROUTER should handle all the connection overhead-it has all the functions needed to do that, and in my experience this is one thing that works flawlessly with Linksys products. All your computers and such should be configured to connect through your LAN-they should completely ignore what kind of broadband connection you have.

[amjohnst]

Try this: change which ports the G5 And AirPort Extreme are plugged into. It could simply be that the ports you're currently using are going bad-slowly. This does happen from time to time.

I'll try switching the ports and see what happens. I'm skeptical that this is the issue though because I've experienced the problem with two different routers.

The second thing to try is o change the cables that go between the router and the G5 and AXBS. New cables, not used cables, should be used here. This will eliminate the possibility that your problems come from old and internally failing cables.

I'll try new cables, also. The current cables are old, and it's possible that they may be the source of the problem, I suppose. One problem with this theory is that the Airport Extreme base station and the G5 lose internet connectivity at the same time. But the G5's networking preferences still claim that the G5 is connected to the internet. Would that happen if there were problems with any of the cables?

When you plug the G5 into the DSL modem, do you change the G5's network settings to use PPPoE? If you don't change anything and it "just works" it's possible that you're having problems because the G5 is intermittently trying to connect through your network. Your ROUTER should handle all the connection overhead-it has all the functions needed to do that, and in my experience this is one thing that works flawlessly with Linksys products. All your computers and such should be configured to connect through your LAN-they should completely ignore what kind of broadband connection you have.

Nope, I do not change the settings to use PPPoE. I just plug the G5 directly into the DSL modem and it works. The G5 is configured to get it's network settings from the LAN.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say the G5 may be trying to connect through the network intermittently. The internet connection is flawless when I connect the G5 directly to the DSL modem. Service never drops. The problem only occurs when the G5 is connected to the internet via the router. Is there some setting on the G5 that could be interfering with the connection when it's connected to the router?

Thanks for the reply. Like I said, I'm baffled what could be causing this, but I'll try changing ports and swapping in new cables.

[wubrew]

Try this exactly. Power down all>connect G5 to modem>power up modem>power up G5>power down G5> connect modem to 'alreadied power down and reset linksys router'> power up linksys router> add all other accoutrement alreadied power down one at a time then power up.
My limited experience with similar problem is based on the fact that the ISP will only issue one set of DHCP for each patron. Using a router like liksys bypass that. Every now and then the router will ,for lack of better desciption,"leak" the multi use info back to the ISP. All ISP have multi user fees. They don't like router with multi multi hard ware connected with only one issued DHCP. When that happened every now and then they stop issuing any DHCP. By connecting to only one HW directly it reset the system to re issue the DHCP lease.Let me know.
PS Make sure your primary connection ie modem to router is into the WAN port. But then you already know that.

[wubrew]

Addendum; make sure you also read the post by quporter here
http://forums.macnn.com/92/networkin...pensive-wi-fi/
especially the part about using router AND access point to distribute the wireless burden.