Windows XP: home network


Recommended Posts

Here is how my home network is set up: Cable modem is connected to PC1, PC1 has two ethernet cards and the first one receives the internet from the modem and the second one goes to a switch. PC2, PC3, and PC4 are all connected to the switch and everything is working fine on those computers for the most part. All PC's running Windows XP Professional. I am on one of the networked PC's and every couple of hours my internet cuts out for about 2 seconds. Anyone have an idea what is causing this? It's not even a wireless network, cat5 all around. :wacko:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here is how my home network is set up: Cable modem is connected to PC1, PC1 has two ethernet cards and the first one receives the internet from the modem and the second one goes to a switch. PC2, PC3, and PC4 are all connected to the switch and everything is working fine on those computers for the most part. All PC's running Windows XP Professional. I am on one of the networked PC's and every couple of hours my internet cuts out for about 2 seconds. Anyone have an idea what is causing this? It's not even a wireless network, cat5 all around. :wacko:

My advice is to replace the switch and ICS with a $50 4 port router.

It's faster, less complicated and you don't need to keep PC1 on to access the internet from the other 'puters.

ICS sucks. Even if you weren't having this two second delay then you'll find that ICS needs a reboot every couple of weeks or it'll get all confused. I just don't think it's that stable.

For cheap and dirty get a Dlink DI-604.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am experiencing something very similar. My setup is similar to yours, I have one machine sharing a cable Internet connection with ICS, I then have a computer that is connected to that computer that has a bridge set up between two NICS that allows my laptop to connect to it and then to the Internet. The laptop randomly will loose the Internet connection for about 20 seconds but still has access to the rest of the internal network. The only time I have noticed it though is when I'm playing Counter-Strike but I'm sure that's just coincidence. I used to get this error in the Event Viewer;

Your computer was not able to renew its address from the network (from the DHCP Server) for the Network Card with network address ------------.  The following error occurred:

The semaphore timeout period has expired. . Your computer will continue to try and obtain an address on its own from the network address (DHCP) server.

but I don't anymore so that might not have had anything to do with it. Do you get any errors in your Event Viewer?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

where is the eventviewer im unfamiliar with that. but the "local area connection disconnected" symbol shows up on my taskbar for the 2 seconds i lose my connection.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.