Home Network Issues

Hi,

Here's the situation:

Configuration:

We have 3 computers networked through a linksys wrt54g. 2 have wired ethernet cards and one has a wireless card. We use WEPA with AES. The opperating systems are as follows:

Machine 1. Wired. XP Home Edition.
Machine 2. Wireless. XP Home Edition.
Machine 3. Wired. XP Pro

Problem:

Around 5 or 6pm every weekday, and sometimes sooner on the weekends, our usually speedy Comcast cable internet slows to a trickle and often stops all together for a period of 5-7 hours.

Also our inter-network communication started off spotty and now our computers don't recognize eachother and we can't share paripherals at all. The home network problem predates the daily internet crash problem, I mention it here incase the problems are related.


Steps taken:

For the interent, we've called the comcasticos out a half dozen times, and have progressively gotten a new modem and all new cable running through the house from the telephone pole out side and checked with all our neighbors to discover that the problem is unique to our house.

All three machines have up to date antivirus software, and have all been using Zone alarm firewall protection.

The daily internet slow-down/hault remains unchanged.

For the home network, we tried running the windows home network setup wizard on all three machines, changing the network name and starting over when it didn't work, and eventually just gave up.

 

well.... here is one thing to try out, why dont you disconnect all 3 computers from the router, connect 1 of them directly to the cable modem, and see if the internet slows down at all between those times you listed. if not, try connecting 1 computer to the router, and try that the next day, and if still doesnt slow down, connect another the next, etc. etc. now... if you do experience the slow down with 1 computer connected to the router try updateing the firm ware on the router. also... try power cycling the router on a daily basis and see if that helps. not to sure what else to try off the top of my head, unless you have a friend that has a router that will let you borrow it for a day or so to see if the router might be faulty.