An update on recent technical problems and more from the admin: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/250292/on-technical-difficulties-mod-coverage-and-other-things/p1?new=1
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Fucking crazy router(?) problem...
Thanatos
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
My router will only let me connect to a handful of internet sites, seemingly ones that I frequent. If I reset it, it will work for everywhere briefly, then go back to this. It won't even let me connect to the router, unless I reset it.
My roommate has hypothesized that someone may be hacking our router, but I changed the WPA key last night, via a wired connection, and that didn't seem to help. It's a Netgear Wireless Router. What the fuck is the problem?
My roommate has hypothesized that someone may be hacking our router, but I changed the WPA key last night, via a wired connection, and that didn't seem to help. It's a Netgear Wireless Router. What the fuck is the problem?
Thanatos on
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I also did a hard reset of it last night, to the factory defaults, and it started up doing the same thing again.
IE, lets assume for the sake of my post that Google works and CNN doesn't work. After the router's been on for a while, try this:
Open a command line (Start - Run - CMD).
Type ipconfig /all >> %userprofile%\desktop\ipconfig.txt and hit enter.
Then type tracert www.google.com >> %userprofile%\desktop\google.txt and hit enter.
After that finishes, type tracert www.cnn.com >> %userprofile%\desktop\cnn.txt and hit enter.
After a bit, you'll end up with three text files on your desktop. ipconfig.txt, google.txt, and cnn.txt. Copy and paste the results here (they likely won't contain any private information) and the various geekery of H/A will be much more equipped to help you.
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That said, I have a guess. My guess is that your computer is using the router IP address as its DNS setting, and that the DNS passthru in the router stops working for whatever stupid reason after the first few minutes its on, so your computer has to rely on the DNS resolution cache to resolve addresses. If this is true, it should be apparent from the above commands, and ideally you can fix it by using your ISP's DNS server.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Have you turned on MAC address filtering and changed the default admin password?
If you run ipconfig/all from a command line, are your DNS servers set to outside IP's or are they set to the gateway IP?
If you're DNS servers are set to the gateway IP, then your gateway is probably failing to relay the DNS requests to your actual DNS servers (as configured statically or DHCP in your router). You can try manually setting your DNS servers in your Local Area Connection properties and seeing if that helps. Then the DNS requests just become regular NAT'd traffic.
[edit] I'm thinking the same as Feral.
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To Ruckus: Mac address filtering seemed like overkill, but yes, the very first things I did when I set it up each time are change the admin password, and set a WPA key.
How old is your router? You had another connection issue thread in here too didn't you? Maybe your routers dead or dying.
My guess is that the router is half-dead or more, and is not responding to any connection attempts. However, it's obviously still able to provide NAT services, or you couldn't post at all. Since most consumer routers are configured to act as a DNS server on the local network, manually setting external DNS servers should solve the problem.
It might be cache related, where your signal is so goatballs your browser only loads those things which it has stashed content for (frequent sites). In this case it could mean that your wireless bit is dying, comming on full on at the start after reboot, but not holding anyof its channels open. See if mebbe the issue clears when you have your tranciever tucked up against the wirouter?
Aside from rebooting, theres also factory resetting, worth a shot if you haven/t tried it already. And if you have tried it, mebbe the signal boost needs to be cranked as sometimes after factory reset the signal strengnth default setting is 25% of max.
as with all routercrazy bs, if it works wired but does not work wireless, ISP good, wireless bad. If no go after factory reset, with trnsceiver nearby, really bad. If no go after F-reset, wiNIC reinstall or another device works okay when subbed, then the fingers be a pointing to the bluebin nature of the netgear wirouter.
open a command prompt (start, run, type in cmd ) type: ping 209.132.8.218. Thats a router from geeks.com so its ok.
If you get a response type in geeks.com in your browser. If you cant get there by navigating your browser then you know or at lease are pretty sure its a DNS problem.
This wont solve your problem but it might let you know what it is.
have you done a packet sniff with something like ethereal?
Negative.
After resetting it again, it seems to be working fine, though it probably won't be once I get back from Wal-Mart, and I'll try doing some pings/traceroutes then.
And yeah, I have done a factory reset.
It still might be DNS. You can DNS lookup a number of sites and see what happens:
On the commandline
nslookup www.some.site.name.com
like
nslookup www.penny-arcade.com
and see if you get a response back. If you do, your DNS is working OK. If you get it for some sites but not others, something weird is going on.
You might be able to flush your local (i.e., on your machine, not the router) DNS cache by right-clicking on your network connection icon in the system tray and clicking "repair." This will clear all the local caches (ARP cache and so on), reconnect to the router, and so on. If you get "can't find the site' symptoms on the router and repair your net connection and suddenly you can't visit ANY sites, including the ones you usually can, your router or the next-hop DNS server is down, or something else is going on.
the router appears to be selectively routing packets, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. routing table getting full somehow? some routing/filtering logic actively preventing communication?
Figure it out by pinging your router and your dns with varying packet sizes:
ping -f -l XXXX 192.168.1.1
Where XXXX is your packet size. Start around 1000, use the biggest packet size possible where you don't get the message "Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set."
Once you've found it, set it in the registry (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/826159/en-us) and in your router.
Uhhh, don't do anything I've said if it confuses you in the slightest.
There's no setting that will fix this. It's not a problem with the computer and if the router is changing something on it's own, it's hosed anyway. You might try flashing the firmware on it and maybe that will knock it loose but in my opinion it's toast. Anything beyond resetting it back to defaults is just grasping at straws and can lead to much frustration. Getting a new one will definitely fix the problem.
Windows IP Configuration
Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : Brett
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Unknown
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Belkin Wireless G Desktop Card
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-17-3F-2E-79-7D
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.2
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Friday, July 27, 2007 10:04:10 AM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Monday, January 18, 2038 8:14:07 PM
The tracert just said "unable to resolve hostname" (this time it decided it wouldn't connect to anything other than Gtalk and Bittorrent).
DrFrylock, I didn't do the nslookup because I couldn't remember the command, and couldn't connect to here to check to see what it was. :P
I'm gonna try manually setting the DNS servers next, see if that helps.
Ya, I'd say your router is probably starting to flake out and losing some of it's services along the way, but basic NAT is pretty resilient so as long as it only has to route, and doesn't have to do any DNS forwarding, it will probably keep working. I'd be prepared to shell out for a new router in a few months though.