Computer Network/Router Question

[Guest db99wj]

Here at work, they installed a new router. Since they did this, we have had sporadic and partial internet availability. Ok, I know that sounds weird. Let me explain. For the most part, email works. The internet will either be down completely or be partially available. For example, I am on here right now, on this site, but if I try to pull up my Igoogle page, or msnbc, or Fox news or any high graphic site, I get the "Internet Exploder can't display the page" .

This all started when they replaced the router that worked fine. It gets real bad when you have multiple tabs open, like I usally do, I roll that way.

They did a check, the IT folks said it is not on their end, the router installer dude said it is not his router, the interweb connection folks (comcast) said everything is fine, our corporate IT guy said that if one thing, like our email works, the rest should, but he is in California. They are all basically blaming each other.

My theory is that their is a bandwidth problem, the new router is set too low, or just can't handle the demand that we have at this office. The more people that are on it, lessens the bandwidth, the more tabs each person has open, the less bandwidth.

Am I or I guess could I be correct in this? It is getting on my nerves, but I am getting to spend more time on here because this site works most of the time!

[TGO David]

Without knowing more about the topography of your network and the type of router you're talking about, it's hard to say. It sounds like sessions are timing out but that could be because of packet window size being set improperly on the router, or it could be a port timing issue on the router, CPU over-utilization on the router, NAT problems.... virtually anything.

Did I understand correctly that Comcast is the ISP? Are you guys using Comcast @Work or just generic old cable Internet? Isn't this at a bank?

[Guest sling]

It will depend on what kind of router you have. Is this a cheap little netgear device or are we talking about a full sized cisco 3000 series router? Natually, everyone is going to be point fingers at each other. However, i do not think it is an ISP problem. The fact that it all started with the router spells out the problem.

It could be how the router is handling the incoming\outgoing packets...

It almost sounds like a NAT issue. This is probably more or less something that someone would actually have to put their hands on to determine the problem. Can you ping external addresses? What kind of latencies are you getting when you do a traceroute to an external address?... etc

It sounds like you have horrible packet loss going on... might even have someone sniff on your network to see how your traffic is being handled...

If your having internal bandwith problems your router could be very noisy with broadcast and multicast traffic as well. Yuck!

Edited May 6, 2008 by sling

[Guest db99wj]

Without knowing more about the topography of your network and the type of router you're talking about, it's hard to say. It sounds like sessions are timing out but that could be because of packet window size being set improperly on the router, or it could be a port timing issue on the router, CPU over-utilization on the router, NAT problems.... virtually anything.

Did I understand correctly that Comcast is the ISP? Are you guys using Comcast @Work or just generic old cable Internet? Isn't this at a bank?

Not sure of the details of the comcast relationship and not sure of the type of connection. I don't work at the bank anymore, hoooray! I work for a commercial appraisal firm, locally owned franchise type.

It will depend on what kind of router you have. Is this a cheap little netgear device or are we talking about a full sized cisco 3000 series router? Natually, everyone is going to be point fingers at each other. However, i do not think it is an ISP problem. The fact that it all started with the router spells out the problem.

It could be how the router is handling the incomingoutgoing packets...

It almost sounds like a NAT issue. This is probably more or less something that someone would actually have to put their hands on to determine the problem. Can you ping external addresses? What kind of latencies are you getting when you do a traceroute to an external address?... etc

It sounds like you have horrible packet loss going on... might even have someone sniff on your network to see how your traffic is being handled...

If your having internal bandwith problems your router could be very noisy with broadcast and multicast traffic as well. Yuck!

Cisco 1700 Series Router. Not sure of what we had before. But the problem definately happened after they installed it. Unfortunately or fortunately, I am not in the IT area and don't have a dog in this hunt, I am just being nosey!

[Guest db99wj]

It's weird, I am on here, but I can't do a google search for "Don't feed the troll", I'm looking for a picture for another thread:stir:

It is very strange to me.

[Guest sling]

Heh heh...Always favored Juniper more than "Crisco"...

However, as said, its hard to diagnose not being there. I'm sure if your kommifornia outsourced tech (no offense to your company) came down and knew half a grain of salt about networking he could probably solve the issue.

But no, just because your email works ( SMTP port 25) doesnt mean everything else should work... (HTTP port 80, SSL 443, etc)

Best to have someone look at the cisco routers running config to best determine wtf is happenin. Hoped that helped at least a bit. Clear as mud?

[TGO David]

It sounds more like an academic thing at this point, but I agree that looking at the running config would be a little more helpful. We had an issue like this when we switched ISPs and it turned out to be a port timing issue on the router's inside interface since we had cranked up the bandwidth considerably.

Oh well... back to other things...

[Guest db99wj]

Yep, like mud. O well, when the boss gets in, he will yell enough, they will get it figured out!

[Guest dotsun]

However, as said, its hard to diagnose not being there. I'm sure if your kommifornia outsourced tech (no offense to your company) came down and knew half a grain of salt about networking he could probably solve the issue.

Yeah I see it everyday, outsourcing IT always sounds like a great plan until you have a real problem. Nothing like boots on the ground.

[Guest sling]

Thank goodness i'm not outsourced...