Wireless network timeouts

I recently set the family up with a Belkin Wireless G+ Router. My younger brother and I have Wireless G network cards; the other two computers are wired since they are physically close to the router. We are both running Windows XP Pro on decent machines (P4 2.4GHz/512 RAM).

From time to time, I experience timeouts when trying to visit pages. I would blame my ISP for this since it's cable and can suffer from bottlenecking; however, reaching the router config at 192.168.0.1 is also sometimes extremely slow, but only sometimes. Sometimes it's very fast - as fast as it should be - but other times it can take 30-60 seconds for it to load.

When browsing sites, I experience the same problems, only in this case there are timeouts because often the page does not load at all. A refresh usually fixes this. Some pages load very fast - as fast as they should on a 6Mbps connection - and sometimes it takes a while. Now of course, every website is on a different server, some sites are just slow. However, I noticed that the sites don't always load slowly or time out, just at certain times.

This was not a problem when the network was 100% wired.

Is it my router config? I've modified very little; I set up encryption, turned of SSID broadcasting, etc. Is it the brand of router? Admittedly, my father and I did little research before purchaing the router, so it could be a poor brand. Is it my computer? Wireless card?

I've also checked for firmware updates, and there are none available.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I had a timeout problem somewhat similar to this a couple weeks ago with my wireless router (though on a wired connection). A simple router reboot solved it. No idea what the problem was.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Interference? Anything operating on the 2.4Ghz band can cause it, and it will make the overall performance of your wireless network suffer when it happens. Microwaves running, cordless phones, other wireless networks could all do it.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Well what should I do to prevent it? I mean, most everyone owns a cell phone, wireless phone, and a microwave...

Double Post:
P.S. your avatar looks like a live action Sephiroth.

Most amazing jew boots

Since most interference (from my experience) does not come from microwaves and cell phones, other possibilities might be neighbors in the area who are using a wireless network on the same channel. This can probably be solved by changing the channel that your router transmits on(Wireless routers do not operate at exactly 2.4 GHz. They usually have 12 channels which vary by a certain percentage of the frequency).

Another, but less likely possibility, is someone who has a cordless phone operating at 2.4 GHz. However, since I am interpreting that this happens more often than would be reasonable for someone to get phone calls, this does not seem to be the case.

Also, what sort of signal strength are you getting? In my experience(again), signals that are at 50% or less tend to pop in and out of service a lot.

I was speaking idiomatically.

IIRC, there is a particular implementation that Orinco put in their PCMCIA wireless adaptors that is specifically tailored to prevent a wireless network slowing down indefinitely in the presence of the regular interference that can leak from a microwave oven.

802.11 implements CSMA/CA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance). If a wireless node senses a 'jam signal' (a pattern of bits announcing another node's intention to transmit), it will back off for a randomly chosen period of time before attempting to send information. If you are in the presence of another wireless network on the same channel with enough activity, your wireless clients might be forced to back off excessively to avoid interference. I'd use a utility to 'sniff' out any available wireless networks in the area. Use a scanner that supports passive mode to pick up networks that don't broadcast their SSID.

You might also do some digging and see what kind of pings you are getting to your router, to your nameserver, and to a reliable remote address (like google.com) and if you are getting any packet loss.

P.S.
The avatar is me running a picture of myself (you can't see the half hawk I had at the moment) through a couple of Photoshop filters out of sheer boredom.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Still looks like a shirtless Sephiroth.

Originally Posted by packrat

Also, what sort of signal strength are you getting? In my experience(again), signals that are at 50% or less tend to pop in and out of service a lot.

It says "Excellent", all of the time. The router itself has a 700ft range (I told my dad, "Are you trying to give the neighbours free internet?") and even downstairs the signal strength is "Excellent". Another reason why I'm confused.

FELIPE NO

You can use NetStumbler to get a more detailed analysis of your signal strength. If you see some correlation between the network timeouts and signal dropouts, then you have a problem with interference.

Most amazing jew boots

I'm having similar problems with my connection...periodically the internet will just give up and i'll have to replug the router to fix it again. Thanks for the advice so far..even though it wasn't for me =)

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I've recently noticed there seems to be a connection between bittorrent and the router. When I start downloading torrents, that's when the timeouts begin. Even if I'm not even utilizing half of the available bandwidth, that's when everything slows down. When I close uTorrent, the problem (slowly) fades. But while it's open and more than one torrent is going, the timeouts occur... At least it seems this way...

Keep in mind it's not just browsing pages that is slow; so is reaching the router config.

I googled and don't see anything about this problem. Maybe there is no connection between the two. Most generally I only run uTorrent when I'm sleeping.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Eleo

I've recently noticed there seems to be a connection between bittorrent and the router. When I start downloading torrents, that's when the timeouts begin. Even if I'm not even utilizing half of the available bandwidth, that's when everything slows down. When I close uTorrent, the problem (slowly) fades. But while it's open and more than one torrent is going, the timeouts occur... At least it seems this way...

Keep in mind it's not just browsing pages that is slow; so is reaching the router config.

I googled and don't see anything about this problem. Maybe there is no connection between the two. Most generally I only run uTorrent when I'm sleeping.

For some reason, I get this exact same problem. I'll have a torrent or two going, and even though it's not taking all of my bandwidth, it knocks my connection out for a good 10 minutes. Eventually it comes back though. I still don't know what's causing it. :/

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Eleo and rendr: Can you isolate what exactly gets knocked out? Does the wireless connection die only? Or does the router or modem die? I too have experienced this, and after a great deal of experimentation, the problem appeared to be solved for me.

How long does utorrent run before you start experiencing problems?

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I don't know how many times I've answered to this specific problem, so here's yet another attempt to clarify the issue of P2P and routers:

Routers are usually not designed with P2P in mind. P2P is using a lot of TCP connections, thus requiring a lot of processing power of whatever device is handling the connections. This has nothing to do with bandwith, however, so even if you're not running torrents at maximum bandwidth, you're likely to put a lot of strain on your router's hardware (which is obviously inferior to your PC's).

Some of the more generic routers are equipped with processors just able to handle common tasks like web surfing and downloading and these models are barely able to handle P2P traffic properly. Compare this to your processor being too slow to render a video in real time and dropping frames.

The effects you're experiencing (timeouts and the like) are in fact symptoms of your router basically crapping out and being flooded by an amount of simultanious TCP connections it can't handle.

The only remedy to this is to limit the number of connections of your P2P client or simply exchanging your router for a higher quality model that is known to be designed for "professional" use (keep in mind to inform you about the CPU and RAM being used by these routers). With Windows XP SP2, there's also a chance of the built-in worm protection (TCP connection limiter) kicking in, restricting the amount of new connections and effectively slowing your internet down to a crawl. There's a patcher available to increase this limit here.

I hope this information helps.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by packrat

Eleo and rendr: Can you isolate what exactly gets knocked out? Does the wireless connection die only? Or does the router or modem die? I too have experienced this, and after a great deal of experimentation, the problem appeared to be solved for me.

How long does utorrent run before you start experiencing problems?

It takes place as soon as the number of connected peers picks up and the torrent really starts moving. Nothing shuts off or stops working entirely, I just get timeouts on a lot of pages and am forced to reload them until they work. Meanwhile, uTorrent works just fine.

Although recently I do remember the card going out on me all of a sudden. I pretty much just restarted my computer and didn't think much of it.

Originally Posted by Rock

I don't know how many times I've answered to this specific problem, so here's yet another attempt to clarify the issue of P2P and routers:

Routers are usually not designed with P2P in mind. P2P is using a lot of TCP connections, thus requiring a lot of processing power of whatever device is handling the connections. This has nothing to do with bandwith, however, so even if you're not running torrents at maximum bandwidth, you're likely to put a lot of strain on your router's hardware (which is obviously inferior to your PC's).

Some of the more generic routers are equipped with processors just able to handle common tasks like web surfing and downloading and these models are barely able to handle P2P traffic properly. Compare this to your processor being too slow to render a video in real time and dropping frames.

The effects you're experiencing (timeouts and the like) are in fact symptoms of your router basically crapping out and being flooded by an amount of simultanious TCP connections it can't handle.

The only remedy to this is to limit the number of connections of your P2P client or simply exchanging your router for a higher quality model that is known to be designed for "professional" use (keep in mind to inform you about the CPU and RAM being used by these routers). With Windows XP SP2, there's also a chance of the built-in worm protection (TCP connection limiter) kicking in, restricting the amount of new connections and effectively slowing your internet down to a crawl. There's a patcher available to increase this limit here.

I hope this information helps.

Well that's tarded. I wonder why this probably wasn't apparent with my previous router. I don't think I'm going to buy a new router for P2P, I think this one was relatively expensive as it is. I mean, who wants to pay to pirate, lol.

I noticed that the slowdown is temporary. Even if I keep the torrents going, eventually things will speed up back to normal if I wait several minutes. I also noticed the slowdown was not apparent on other computers in the house. EDIT: Actually, it is.

I did forget to use that tool to increase the number of half-open sockets, as I formatted C:\ recently and usually only increase the number when I'm trying to leech/test proxies. Does it really affect bittorrent, though? If so, then there's a lot of people in the world right now with their bittorrent client configured for X connections while only actually getting 10...

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?