An occasional problem with my ethernet card.

[MeoTwister5]

So yesterday I started having problems on my wifi where I get randomly disconnected from the main router in the house or sudden random signal and data transfer drops. I know for a fact that it shouldn't be an intrinsic problem with the router because all the other devices in the house connects properly.

When I get dc'd I can connect to anyone of my other wifi connections, but once the main router refuses to let me in the only way for me to reconnect is to disable/enable the ethernet card. This doesn't happen with any other router.

Anyone got an idea. I've had my fair share of wifi problems but this is the only one that really has me stumped.

[MeoTwister5]

So it's been happening even more recently. Since I don't have a USB wifi dongle or a spare card available, I decided to test it by using my Galaxy S7 connected to the wifi networked while tethered.

Lo and behold it's connecting properly to the network and I'm getting the correct download and upload speeds I should be getting from my ISP. Is this enough to conclude that it's really my ethernet card that's jacked up? Naturally I'd rather not want to have my phone tethered every time I'm home just so I can use the net, but does this prove I really need to get a new card?

[larethian]

Check the logs for clues first. Maybe you can also share your router and card model instead of just posting symptoms?

Can you connect your card directly to the modem and see whether your internet connection is ok?

[MeoTwister5]

It's a fiber optical network with a built in wifi that was provided by the ISP without the box for some reason so I can't exactly get into the model and documentation. It's also in the other end of the house so... yeah...

What I CAN say is that:

1. It's a problem only with my CPU. The other computers and network devices in the house can connect just fine, cabled and wireless.
2. Temporarily fixing the problem requires disabling/enabling my wireless adapter (TP-Link PCI 150mbps), and it'll only hold a stable connection for maybe 5 minutes. Rolling back and/or reinstalling the drivers does nothing. Once I disconnect I can't reconnect unless I do the above. Likewise ipconfig shows that while connected I still have proper IP address and DNS even though the connection stability goes to shit.
3. Disabling the card and using an alternative connection via the USB (in my case my phone, connected to the network and tethered) gets the connection in, so I'm assuming using a USB wifi dongle would be the same.

[larethian]

So it's a fiber modem router? It should still have its model number on the unit itself. Or are you saying that it's somehow inbuilt as part of the laid infrastructure? I'm not familiar with such a setup as that's not how my country wires up households with fiber. It's the service provider that provides a modem router unit in my case. And I can access the control page directly after connecting directly to the modem router.

If you are unable to control the router directly, it's hard to troubleshoot the issue. Your best bet, I feel, would be to ask a friend to check your card on his LAN setup.

Also, one thing bothers me about your 2nd post. Are you connecting your PC to your S7 through tethering or are you connecting your S7 to the wifi LAN? Because if it's the formal, you would be connecting your PC to your phone and using your mobile data plan and not the wifi LAN in your home, because you can't connect a phone to a wifi while your phone is on tether mode.

[MeoTwister5]

Originally Posted by larethian

So it's a fiber modem router? It should still have its model number on the unit itself. Or are you saying that it's somehow inbuilt as part of the laid infrastructure? I'm not familiar with such a setup as that's not how my country wires up households with fiber. It's the service provider that provides a modem router unit in my case. And I can access the control page directly after connecting directly to the modem router.

If you are unable to control the router directly, it's hard to troubleshoot the issue. Your best bet, I feel, would be to ask a friend to check your card on his LAN setup.

Also, one thing bothers me about your 2nd post. Are you connecting your PC to your S7 through tethering or are you connecting your S7 to the wifi LAN? Because if it's the formal, you would be connecting your PC to your phone and using your mobile data plan and not the wifi LAN in your home, because you can't connect a phone to a wifi while your phone is on tether mode.

It's the latter. I checked around and yes apparently more recent Android phones can stay connected to the wifi while tethered and essentially used as a bridge, so it's basically like a USB wifi dongle. It's not my data plan because I tried it with my sim card removed and it still works.

[larethian]

Based on your descriptions so far, my current guess is that you have a deteriorating card that is unable to maintain a stable reliable connection over a distance and a variety of obstacles. The regular intermittent drops (which could be transparent to you) might cause one end to disengage totally after some time.

A troublesome way to verify this is to move your PC right next to the modem router. If the problem persists after that, then I can no longer put a finger to the problem. It's also hard to troubleshoot if you do not have administrative control to the modem router.

[Dist]

To me this seems rather unlikely. Why would the router reject his PC's connection after the connection drops until the PC's ethernet card is reset?

Sure he could move his PC next to the router, but he doesn't have one from what he's told. He also could buy a cheap-o ethernet card and try with that .. though waste of money if it doesn't fix the issue. Could also mess with the settings of the ethernet card itself .. unlikely to help, but doesn't break anything. Sometimes messing with the Speed & Duplex setting has helped me in the past with shitty connection issues - My old PC literally would not connect to the internet with a higher speed than 0.01kb/s if I didn't set duplex to 100M / Half.

As far as fiber optic connections go, they don't use a modem. You can literally attach a RJ45 cable to your wall and that cable to your PC and you're set. You can buy a router to then spread the wifi of that connection around the house. I have no idea what a '' modem router '' is supposed to be. '' Built-in wifi '' isn't a thing either. There literally is a router somewhere in the building of yours .. Whether you have access to it or not is a different story. Well if it's not in your household you clearly don't have access so not much you can do there.

Since the OP stated that this does not happen with any router then why not connect a '' working '' router into the existing fiber connection and spread the wifi around the house using the said router .. It would then work with your pc as well .. the other PC's or devices could still use the existing Wi-Fi if they wanted.

[larethian]

Originally Posted by Dist

To me this seems rather unlikely. Why would the router reject his PC's connection after the connection drops until the PC's ethernet card is reset?

Sure he could move his PC next to the router, but he doesn't have one from what he's told. He also could buy a cheap-o ethernet card and try with that .. though waste of money if it doesn't fix the issue. Could also mess with the settings of the ethernet card itself .. unlikely to help, but doesn't break anything. Sometimes messing with the Speed & Duplex setting has helped me in the past with shitty connection issues - My old PC literally would not connect to the internet with a higher speed than 0.01kb/s if I didn't set duplex to 100M / Half.

As far as fiber optic connections go, they don't use a modem. You can literally attach a RJ45 cable to your wall and that cable to your PC and you're set. You can buy a router to then spread the wifi of that connection around the house. I have no idea what a '' modem router '' is supposed to be. '' Built-in wifi '' isn't a thing either. There literally is a router somewhere in the building of yours .. Whether you have access to it or not is a different story. Well if it's not in your household you clearly don't have access so not much you can do there.

Since the OP stated that this does not happen with any router then why not connect a '' working '' router into the existing fiber connection and spread the wifi around the house using the said router .. It would then work with your pc as well .. the other PC's or devices could still use the existing Wi-Fi if they wanted.

Of course they do, your ONT is technically a modem.
Telecommunication signals, even optical signals as far as I know, need to be modulated before they are multiplexed, transmitted, then demuxed and demodulated on the receiving end. So yes, you need some kind of a modem. This may be a little hardcore but a good book to understand this subject of modulation and multiplexing techniques used in fiber optics: http://as.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTi...470623020.html(edit: on 2nd thoughts, sorry, this is just me going into overkill mode). Anyway I'm pretty sure from my past professional experience that different kinds of telecommunication signal content requires mod-demod mux-demux to avoid collisions.

If you are telling me that this is what you do in your home, plugging into the wall an RJ-45, either the wall termination outlet itself has a built-in ONT which already demuxed and demodulated the optical signal, or your provider is doing something I don't understand. (see edit 2 below)

Modem and routing functions are done by ICs on PCBs and loaded firmwares, and a modem/router (combo) is merely a unit or box that houses both types of hardware and integrates them. I'm kind of surprised you have not heard of it; they have been around for quite a while. The following is for cable internet (just to show that it has been around) but it is a combo box with a wifi router and modem all-in-one: https://www.netgear.com/home/product...etgear_organic

As a matter of fact, it's simple to incorporate 'built-in' wifi in practically any kind of electronics, it's just adding one more piece of silicon to the PCB (of course the firmware/software needs to be written as well). Whether it's worth doing it or relevant to the device itself is another question

As for me, I use fiber for my home as well, and the ONT (aka the modem) brand I'm using is Zhone (provided by my service provider). This is my unit:

Images

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My unit has no wifi capabilities so I hook it up to another router. I hook up my game console directly as well to enjoy a dedicated 1Gbps of speed. The yellow cable is the fiber patch cable that connects to the UPC connector of my ONT. In fact, my entire country's fiber network is wired like that. We need to hook up a fiber cable from termination outlet from the wall to an ONT. So I'm not familiar with infrastructure that employs built-in ONTs where you plug an RJ-45 to the wall, or any other kind of infrastructure. Furthermore, I also have access to the router interface on this device to configure port forwarding for my NAS (which is now disconnected because it died a week ago ;_; ) (edit 2: so I looked up some pics of infrastructure from other countries, and see ONTs mounted to the outside of the building, which could explain our different experience in infrastructure termination points )

Lastly, as an extension to the subject of combo boxes; are there any ONT-wifiRouter combo units? Yup: http://www.zhone.com/products/ZNID-GE-24xx/

Before I end off completely, I'm definitely no professional expert in fiber optics or network infrastructure; but the position I had held previously (which I really hate to talk about for private reasons ) was a technical one in embedded electronics and while I had specialized in graphics and video processing (drivers, middleware, applications, I've done all), the devices I worked on were hooked to telecommunications infrastructure and I actually had to know enough about signal processing and transmission end to do my job. So maybe a guy who is a pro in network infrastructure can help the OP better than I, shrug.

[quigonkenny]

Meo, what is the OS on your computer? By the terms you were using, I'm assuming Windows, but which version? If it's 10, I've heard of people having various issues with the new Anniversary Update, so it might be related to that.

Either way, it sounds to me like an issue on the PC side. The PC-side wifi hardware is losing the ability to communicate with the router, and is not able to do so again until reset. That could be due to bad wifi hardware (which, given the short, but consistent, time before it fails again, is what I think it is), or it could be an OS/drivers issue. Probably not drivers, since you said that rolling them back or reinstalling them didn't fix it, but I would still recommend downloading the latest drivers and reinstalling them if you haven't already, to rule out the possibility of corrupted driver files.

Simplest way to see if it's an actual wifi hardware issue is just to replace the hardware. If you're using a laptop, those USB dongles are pretty cheap and can get pretty tiny. You'll lose access to a USB port, and you usually won't get as good range (read: speed) as you had before unless you get one of the more cumbersome models (with the big antennae), but it'll still work fine for household ranges. If you're using a desktop/tower, just replace/install a wifi card. Either way, you should also disable the old hardware, if you aren't able to remove it outright. Even most laptops nowadays use a dedicated card for wifi that can be removed, but disabling it in Device Manager (or better yet, in BIOS, if you have that option) should also do the job. Hopefully the problem never crops back up. But if it does...

That brings me to an unfortunate possibility, and that is file corruption. Often that can cause previously working drivers to stop working, and reinstalling them or rolling them back may not fix it. Hopefully you keep your stuff backed up, but if you don't, I would do so, then scan your hard drive for errors. If you are running Windows, CHKDSK should be able to find any of the more egregious disk errors (there are plenty of tips on how to use it online), but if that comes up empty, there are other freeware options that will make sure. Scanning the RAM is probably not a bad idea as well. If you're running 7 or later, type "memory" in the Start Menu search, and you should see the "Windows Memory Diagnostic" tool as an option. It will give you the option to restart your computer and scan your RAM. If either your hard drive or RAM ends up bad, you should probably reinstall the OS once you replace the faulty part, since any files that were corrupted should still be corrupted. Even if things seem to work fine, you could run in to problems down the road.

[MeoTwister5]

I've actually already solved it by getting a USB wifi dongle, so apparently it was really the adapter. Took it out already and the dongle works fine, heck it's even faster than what my card used to be able to handle.

[quigonkenny]

Awesome. Good to hear that. The new dongle must use a newer protocol than the old adapter. Either that or the hardware has just gotten better than back when I was working on them.