[kupan787]

I am really confused. Our "internet connection" seems like it is really messed up. I am not sure who is to blame...

So, we have Comcast internet, a linksys router, and an Apple Airport Extreme (802.11g) as an AP. If I transfer files around our local network, connected via wifi, I see speeds of around 1.5MBps. If I try and load a webpage, connected via wifi, it is slower than dialup often times it will just time out. If I ping comcast.net while connected via wifi, I see ping times of 22ms, with about a 4% packet loss. Now, if I connect directly to the linksys router, I see normal webpage loading times.

So does anyone have any thoughts what could be wrong? At first I thought it was the wifi (too congested), but I get great transfer rates on the network, so that can't be it. Then I thought it was the comcast, but when directly plugged in it works fine. And also, the ping times are pretty low, so it all seems to be working. And this just started about 3 months ago, and it comes and goes. Any thoughts, suggestions or advice would be great!

[bluedog]

Perhaps the DNS isn't properly configuring through your wifi.

Look at the administration webpage for your linksys. Connect to it directly with an ethernet cable. Then go to http://192.168.1.1/ Which is usually the default for the setup pages.

Look for the DNS address it is receiving and configured for.

Try copying that *explicitly* into your DNS setting on your airport networking configuation. It may improve things, if so you should see if your wifi router setup is not passing this DNS address along to your laptop when connected from that interface.

Good luck.

[ghporter]

I agree that you should investigate the DNS issue before worrying about anything else. Another thing to do is to check your actual throughput speeds and compare that to the kinds of page loading speeds you get. I use SpeedTest to evaluate my connection speed. This process will tell you if you have a problem with the connection or with resolving addresses because if you "eventually" load the site and your speed is appropriate for your connection, then the connection itself is obviously working.

Also, read this news article on BroadbandReports.com. It looks like Comcast has "issues" with DNS server management. So just in case, look here for a list of DNS servers that you might be able to use. Since most ISPs "supposedly" don't block using DNS servers other than the ones they provide, you should be able to enter one of the servers listed on the page I linked and get your addresses resolved.

[kupan787]

I ended up calling comcast yesterday because things got worse. I plugged directly into the modem, and pages were taking ages to load. I also ran a few speed tests. Download speeds were fine, but the upload tests never ran. I tried logging into my webservers FTP site, and it worked. When attempting to upload a file, I was getting less than 500 bytes per second. So something was really wrong. Comcast said they saw the same issues on their side for my connection. Unfortunately my roommate, whos name is on the account, was out of town so I couldn't schedule an appointment. But today, suddenly, everything is better. I'll see how long this lasts, i'll probably still want to get comcast out here at some point. But I will look into changing my DNS servers away from comcast. Would I need to change them both on my linksys and my airport? Since my airport is just an AP, and passing the routing function off to my linksys, does it need to have its DNS servers changed?

[ghporter]

"...But today, suddenly, everything is better." This is the key to your issue. Comcast almost certainly discovered that they had goobered up somewhere, and your call identified that a customer was unhappy. So they finally got off their duffs and fixed it corrected the issue.

I have had comparable problems (in a completely different field, but it really is comparable) and once I identified that there was a problem, it "healed". Yep, that sort of stuff happens.

Don't mess with your AirPort Base Station; the router should be passing everything it gets properly. The only time you might need to do anything like alter the settings would be if you found that wired computers were working but wireless ones weren't.