Help. Strange home network problem.

[DamnDoggy]

I need help diagnosing and fixing my home networking problem. I have DSL service through PacBell in Southern California. The main computer in my house is a desktop machine that is running Windows 98. I use EnterNet 300 to connect to the internet.

I've been sharing this internet connection with my wife's computer which is a laptop using Sygate 3.0 and a hub. Recently my wife bought a new laptop and is not able to access the internet properly. Here are the symptoms:

- She has a connection to the internet. I know this because I can successfully ping various sites.

- The most telling symptom is that she's noticed that she cannot send long emails. She can, however, send short messages through her web-based yahoo email account. Sending email through an email client like Outlook is not working either. My hypothesis is that, for some reason, her internet connection is not allowing her to send data properly. Receiving seems to be OK. I have noticed that some sites that require her to enter information such as message boards and e-commerce checkout processes don't work properly (strangely enough - Google is working perfectly).

- Lastly, some pages of websites are very quick to load while others are unusually slow...sometimes no connection can be made to a site.

Can someone provide some guidance on this issue? I would really appreciate it. I'm baffled here because her old computer worked without any problems.

Thanks!

 

[Thresher]

Are you using a Wireless LAN or regular ethernet?

Is she using WinXP on the Laptop?

If wireless LAN, did you add this after market or did it come installed?

What brand of WLAN card?

There are a lot of issues with wireless LAN and WinXP, mostly due to the fact that the WLAN card manufacturers do not have their act together regarding drivers.

 

[RagManX]

Is the hub 10 mbit, 100 mbig, or 10/100 mbit? What about the NIC? My guess is a bad NIC, bad hub or port on the hub, or failed LAN speed negotiation. I would try manually setting the NIC to whatever speed the hub can handle, half-duplex. If that works, try changing to full duplex. If it still works, you've got either a card of a hub that doesn't talk properly for negotiation. That's my best guess.

RagManX

 

[DamnDoggy]

The hub is not wireless (wish I could afford one). It's a Netgear 6 port 10Base-T Ethernet hub Model: EN106. Doesn't look like I can manually change any settings on it. I also tried switching ports, but that doesn't seem to help. Still baffled. Thanks for your suggestions!

 

[DamnDoggy]

I don't think it's a hub problem because I've been able to share tons of data between my desktop and her laptop through the hub. It's just when she wants to access the internet that we've been having problems. Any other guesses?

Thanks a lot.

 

[Thresher]

Hmmmm.

Odd.

I would suspect a firewall is cutting her off. If she can ping outside your local net, then she has a connection. It sounds like she's getting framented packets and a lot of deflections.

If you are running WinXP, make sure that the MS firewall is turned off. I'd also check your switch to make sure it's not blocking some ports it shouldn't be.

I've heard some people talk about problems with MS built in firewall and third party firewalls(like ZoneAlarm), so that is something to look at also.