c9 | Apparently I'm not a geek after all...

Apparently I'm not a geek after all...

Dear Lazyweb*,

I have two computers, a laptop and a desktop. They both use wireless to talk to a router, and the router talks to Bell and gives me sweet sweet internet. The laptop works 100% fine.

The desktop works fine on some websites, but hangs on others -- just sits there, trying to download the page, for minutes on end. It simply can't download pages from certain sites, like livejournal. But other sites work perfectly, no slowdown or anything. The desktop can talk to the router with no problems. The desktop can talk to the laptop with no problems. The desktop can even ping www.livejournal.com with no problems WHILE unable to load the webpage www.livejournal.com.

I reinstalled Windows XP from scratch today, and the exact same behaviour persists.

I erased all the configuration info from the router, and the exact same behaviour persists.

I have tested the laptop from the same location, same router, same website, same time, and had it work just fine.

In summary: AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH. What am I missing??

Sincerely, Cam

P.S. For those curious as to why this would bother me so much: I teach this shit. Argh!

* Lazyweb = I'm too lazy to figure it out on my own. Though in this case, I've been banging my head against the brick wall for a while now, so it's not to much laziness as self-preservation.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Three thoughts occur to me. Feel free to smack me for suggesting anything too obvious.

Make sure the IP address the router assigns to your internal network is not too close to any IP you may be trying to connect to. I usually leave it alone, so it's just the defaults, but if you are more handy, you might have been tempted to change them.

I have an XP PC and an OS X laptop. The laptop loves Wi-Fi. The PC had issues. I first needed to make sure that it would never try to dial or choose a proxy, altho it seems like you have removed any such concerns. When either computer has hanged on a site load, I have hit refresh, and it's popped up right away.

Double-check any virus-checking you may have going on. My Norton hung my e-mail one day for no apparent reason. I could receive but not send.

Oh yeah! One more thing... what browser are you using? I have found that MSIE loves some sites, and Firefox loves others. May mean nothing, but though I'd ask...

Have tried both, on both systems. No help, unfortunately.

Thanks, but no no and no. The router creates a completely separate private network for my machines to play in, so the IPs are not even similar (though similarity is not actually a problem). I also have no dial-up possibilities, and the desktop isn't trying anything like that. It is connected just fine, and loading most sites just fine. It's just some. And finally, no anti-virus as it's a fresh install of the OS.

The answer is clear. There is a gremlin living inside your desktop.

Seriously, that's the only explanation that makes sense so far! :)

I don't think you want my advice. Remember what happened when I tried to show you how to fix something in InfoPath?

I know NADA about networking anyway. My solution to ALL of my networking woes has always been: 1) Power cycle everything involved. 2) Repeat step 1 until desired behavior appears. You would be surprised at how often that works. Actually, no you probably wouldn't be :-).

Yeah: "Here, I helped write InfoPath. You just--- *blink* It crashed!"

Everything's been power-cycled a ton. Grrrr.

*gasp* we lost another one.

*sigh*

Oh … maybe I can try to be helpful too.

1) Can you plug your desktop directly into the router? How about modem directly into your desktop? If it works maybe you can trace it to a problem with your wireless card.

2) Could it be a thing with the DNS process? What happens if you type http://66.150.15.150:80 into your browser instead of http://www.livejournal.com ?

Yeah. Probably not but thought I’d mention.

1. Once I get a longer ethernet cable, that's my plan. Our condo has poor wiring options.

2. Same problem using the IP.

Thanks tho!

Ditch Bell for Execulink, Sentex, or Golden Triangle On-Line. All have excellent tech support.

Bell works fine on one PC, and used to work fine on both. So I find Bell to be less likely the culprit. I will check them out though.

I reinstalled Windows XP from scratch today, and the exact same behaviour persists.

this was your first step? what the hell are they telling you to teach people at that place...

i will offer my experience from yesterday: almost all day tobin and i could not access _most_ sites online, or, they would just barely start loading (like the title bar and that's about it). LJ barely worked, none of my forum sites worked that well, and even /. was crawling along (and sometimes worked and sometimes didn't)

due to your experience and ours, i would like to submit the theory that some major backbone networks must have had hiccups in canada yesterday.

cam... reinstall windows? do you _see_ what's wrong with that?

The problem has been going on for a while. It was *not* my first step.

cam... reinstall windows? do you _see_ what's wrong with that?

Windows sucks, I agree, but Mac sucks cause I have to spend $2000 to use it, and Linux sucks cause I have to spend weeks compiling and configuring to get equivalent functionality. Everything sucks.

I have to spend weeks compiling and configuring to get equivalent functionality

Yes, very true. In 1999. Not so true any more. I know you need ndiswrapper, and that sucks and is a pain, but it's not the OS that's at fault because some silly hardware vendor won't release some specs on their silly hardware. I know it's *perceived* as a problem for the OS (or at least widespread adoption of the OS), but really, there is A TON of hardware out there that "just works" with Linux.

Anyway, my micro-rant doesn't really help with your problem :-)

I concur with Halimattfax, you need to wire it up and rule out the wireless card. After all you've gone through with this I'm about 99% certain it's an oddball interaction between your router and the card.

Very true, things are better than 1999. But Linux still does not match the desktop functionality and ease of use of Windows. I know why, I'm not judging, but it's a fact. Luckily, it's improving far faster than Windows is, meaning the gap narrows daily.

Gotta find a long wire somewhere. I just can't stand the idea of dragging the whole PC into the kitchen.

Hm, I don't know. If I were to just install GNOME and leave it alone, I think it would be easier to actually _use_ than Windows. Where you (well, I) get into trouble is the constant tweaking and playing around I like to do (for example, I'm building GNOME from scratch right now -- I want my wavy windows!!!)

On the desktop functionality front, I think Linux & OS X have Windows so beat that Windows just can't catch up -- it would take a complete change in the interface -- so complete, it wouldn't be "Windows" any more. Where I will agree that Linux doesn't match up to Windows is in the system administration field. Windows is much easier to administer for someone who doesn't really understand what they're doing. Of course, that also means it's easier to mess up. :-)

I spent three hours on Saturday re-installing drivers for Windows 2000 on a friend's laptop -- don't tell me Windows is easier to use :-)

1. You are not "user," so your mileage is not representative.

2. We're having different conversations, really. It's how each OS manages "install and everything just works," "install and one thing doesn't work," and "install and nothing works." Windows does really well with #1 (thanks to manufacturers and Microsofts' bullying), Mac OS X does perfectly with #1 (thanks to all that cash going to Apple), Linux does mediocre (thanks the the large variety of hardware in the world, and the small subset that has perfect support).

The other situations are far more fluid, and far more balanced.

Of course, I'm not advocating, I'm just bitching.

I'm still not convinced. With the exception of laptops, I've found that Linux is more likely to have drivers for all the hardware on a desktop, whereas with Windows you usually need to install the manufacturer's drivers after the OS install.

But really, its not the OS's fault in either case. It's the hardware manufacturers'.

I'm less cranky about it now, so I'm nore willing to give Linux a fair shot. Today's mission (for you, since I'm teaching): find out if Mandrake (or hell, anybody) supports my linksys card out of the box. You could win a lollipop!

You need to find or build a kernel with 4K_STACKS set to N. The Fedora kernel is built with 4K_STACKS turned on, and that breaks ndiswrapper.

I know nothing about the kernels of other distros. I would bet, however, that Ubuntu or Mandrake will probably work -- they seem to take a less hardline approach to breaking things than Fedora does. :-)

See this howto on the Ubuntu site.

Thanks dude. Remember when I installed BSD, and you had me recompile the kernel, and the machine got trashed, and I ran away scared? I fear kernel recompiles no longer, I actually teach them sometimes. :)

So that's what I'm up to now. ndiswrapper caused nasty things to happen to my previous install, so I did a fresh install and installed the kernel source, etc. WHat fun. I neglected to install the graphical dev tools, so make xconfig wouldn't work. I'm installing them now.

Annoyance of the day*: anaconda (or whoever is responsible for add/remove components) doesn't know where the packages are on the CDs, so it asks for the same CDs over and over in random order as it works its way through my list of adds/removals.

* If that's the biggest annoyance of the day, I can deal. :)

There's a fix for that: "system-config-packages --tree={path to cd}" or even better --isodir={path to ISO images} -- you don't even need to burn 'em.

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2004-July/msg04610.html
http://www.redhat.com/magazine/004feb05/departments/tips_tricks/

Sweet, I'll have to take a look at that.

Hey, this sounds familiar (tho the hardware is different):

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.redhat.fedora.general/118745/match=+ping+browse+

Very similar -- that's my browser symptom exactly. I wish there was a solution accompanying. :)

I agree about ruling out the wireless card. Maybe try a newer driver for it than the one that MS shipped with WinXP?

Computers annoy me so much. Nothing has changed. I *can* use the network and the internet. It's just certain websites.

It is unfathomable to me that computing, completely based on math, can produce such randomized results when you repeat an action. It's sick.

Oops. I forgot to explain my line of thinking when I suggested driver.

Perhaps some sites are sending data in larger packets, malformed packets, or with different MTUs that are confusing one of the TCP/IP layers as the data is passed from hardware abstraction layer to protocol implementation layer. Perhaps a newer version of the driver incorporates better error-handling of such malformed data.

Oh, agreed, a new driver should certainly be checked. I was just whining, that's all. :)

Waitasec. You're a Macintosh geek -- where the hell did you learn all those words?? :-)

Hehehehe

Ok I'm a closet windows guy too. I use Mac because then I don't need to think about HALs, drivers and packets. I use Windows because I, too, teach that.. although it's been over 8 years since I taught a TCP/IP networking course.

My damn Mac G4 laptop has been in the shop for 5 weeks now. It came back and had new dents on the case, so they had to send it away..

Oh right, I forgot about your TCP/IP history. That explains why you'd talk about malformed packets and so forth. :)

I'm *so* glad I bought a cheap ass laptop. It's got scratches all over the outside, and I'm not upset at all!

I'm beginning to freak out slightly about the Powerbook. I caught myself considering wiping it down with a baby wipe last night. I think I may have developed Apple-related OCD.

First off, you must never talk bad about Microsoft...

Secondly try removing the Linux stickers from the case, I find negative reinforcement does not work well with computers...

:P

Seriously though, how's the signal strength on the desktop? I know laptop antennas have a much better pickup then the PCI WiFi cards!

We have so many people in our building with wireless internet, and 2.4GHz phones that even in our small condo we had to pick up a set of High Gain Antenna's

Signal strength is excellent, I recently moved the router to a new, closer location. But the problem existed both before and after that change.

Also, it's only certain websites, there's no problem inside the condo network.

Computers suck.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Apparently I'm not a geek after all...

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Apparently I'm not a geek after all...

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