DSL connection keeps breaking off

I have a high speed DSL account with Bell Sympatico which I have going through a D Link DI-808HV 8 port router. I have 5 computers on a home network. All computers are running Windows XP Pro. Until recently, I had a 4 port SMC Barricade router and a D Link switch, but wife kept complaining about her connection breaking off...she plays that Toontown online game, which needs a steady connection apparently. My daughter upstairs also plays this game, some of the time at the same time as wife....youngest daughter is on Habbo Hotel alot, my son downloads tunes alot...so its a very busy little network for sure. Well, since I put the new D Link router on the system (wife was soooo sure that just having the extra ports instead of running the switch was the answer) the connection is breaking off more and more often... I notice it cuz msn messenger signs in and out almost every 5 minutes....I remember a tidbit from somewhere one time about cloning the mac addresses of all the computers so that it appears to Sympatico that it is only one computer not 5...but would this not confuse the router then when it is directing infomation packets?? Any suggestions on how to improve my connection would be appreciated...cuz not sure what to do now....get another line installed and have dsl on it as well?

 

Sounds to me that since there are two users going to the same site playing the same game, that can cause the site to disconnect a user. Now if you are talking about network saturation, along with possible WiFi disconnects, that can be other things.

IE if all users are using the same 1.5mb connection at the same time, literaly you really do not get the same speed for everyone. One way to test the connection is possibly by only connecting with one computer, and running to the site in question to see if it is connection loss problems, or other things.

When you ping the sites, and not having the other person using a P2P program to download songs if that is the case, what times are you getting to those sites?

 

The wife don't seem to have many probs with her connection when son is not doing any downloading of songs, or if youngest daughter is not signing into Habbo...could it be that we are reaching our bandwidth limit and their is nothing we can do about it? Is there a way to check how much bandwidth we have and how much of it we are actually using? Other daughter and wife have played that Toontown game at the same time many times with no probs, but when the others start their activities mentioned above is when probs occur.

 

You could use one of the bandwith testing sites, and there are quite a few of them posted over at http://www.dslreports.com in the tools section. Most likely with all of you on the connection at the same time, that you are saturating the connection to the point that you are causing a slowdown.

 

Hi,

MAC addresses are hard-wired into the nic and every one in the world is unique. Manufacturers are each given a block of numbers to use.

The router, in a way, "clones" them for you to the isp and the rest of the internet. The router is a very smart computer and gets the IP address that the isp assigns. It then gives (leases) IP addresses etc to all other nodes (anything hooked) that need an IP on the lan. So all of your computers are already hidden. They send and receive data to the router and only as far as the router, which then translates onto the internet and "talks" with single IP/mac addresses.

You can see that the router has an external port to the internet, and then the internal ports to the lan. They are separated by what's call NAT (network address translation) within the router and it handles the traffic between the lan and the internet.

That may or may not have been a metaphor someone used as I just did, but you're right that if they all had the same mac address, your network wouldn't function. The mac is a principle way that routers and switches keep track of "who's where" for routing data on the LAN.

BTW, I've heard of phone lines having :"noise" that disrupted both dial up or dsl connections. May not be your problem, but the phone company shouldn't charge to check it and put a filter on it if in fact it would help.

I've known of ISPs "timing people out" on broadband if they were using too much bandwidth, even if they paid for that much. They can restrict the amount you have and charge for the amount you can have both for download and upload speeds and knock you off if you hit max for too long. I'm not saying yours does, but you could ask. You could also ask if they have more bandwidth possibilities where you are, and what they charge to increase it.

Happy New Year.

 

All these problems are coming in the last week or so....also wife gets dsconnected from her game (Toontown) when the phone rings....again this is a new occurance. I don't know about contacting Sympatico about my bandwidth tho...they may not like the fact of having a router with 5 computers hooked up...lol. Or they may just suggest another phone line and split up the service, but besides the cost it would not be one network then for sharing of the printer etc. May have to just put up with this or schedule people so not too many are using alot of bandwidth at one time.

 

If you keep getting disconnected because the phone rings, then it is a Filter problem, not a network problem. Go through and double check all phones to make sure that the filters are installed properly. Most people install a "Home Run" for their DSL modem so that it is on a dedicated line from the NID.