Occassional Internet Access Problem

21 Aug 2006 6:26 PM

Andrew Weiss

I have several machines in our network all connected to a new Linksys 48 port
Gigabit switch. All client machines in the network are IP assigned via DHCP.
We have a linux distro serving as VPN Router/Default gateway. One machine
in my network periodically stalls when trying to access web pages, and then
it will eventually time out. In some cases, it will stall...and if the user
closes the browser (sometimes IE, sometimes FireFox) and re-opens it,
everything is corrected. Most recently I was present when the user opened
his browser, in the status bar it just said "Attempting to connect to
<ipaddress>" and then it would time out after a minute or so. I had the user
close the browser and re-open it...same thing. I remembered that the first
BETA of Windows Vista had a problem when you would first boot it that it
wouldn't "connect" to the gateway so you couldn't access webpages. In order
to fix the problem in the BETA you had to ping the IP address of the default
gateway and then open your browser and everything would work correctly. So,
for giggles, I tried that on this machine...same result...the user was able
to connect to web pages after he pinged the default gateway.

Before arriving at this revelation, I had replaced the switch, replaced the
cable to his office, replaced the NIC in his machine, switched the cable over
to shielded twisted pair, pretty much did EVERYTHING under the sun. Does
anyone know if there is a setting I can change to prevent the user from
having to ping the DG to get his internet connection to work?? I know that
the second BETA of Vista no longer has this problem, but I'm not sure how to
fix it.

Many thanks,

Andrew

21 Aug 2006 8:40 PM

Ian

One of the most common reasons for this kind of problem is faulty
power-saving features on the network card. Look for an 'Allow Windows to turn
this card off to save power' or suchlike option, and UNtick it.