Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with dsl and router

my dsl works fine but I can't reach one website that I know is not down. what can I do?

krautland — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:57:41 -0800

my dsl works fine but I can't reach one website that I know is not down. what can I do? I'm with crappy provider x and they have given me their no-name crappy wireless router y. I set it all up and it pretty much works aside from them filtering gnutella (thankyouverymuch, grrr) with one exception:

a certain website I am trying to access times out all the time. no response. now I have my iphone right next to me and I know this site is up. I can see it from my office no problem. I even spoke to its owner, who was very interested but couldn't figure out why I had this problem. enable a proxy like hotspot shield and again no problem whatsoever. alas, the proxies I know are too slow to be of any use for me.

I have tried to ping the site without success and a recent traceroute kind of dropped off around step seventeen at oakland1.level3.net, which I presume to be some kind of backbone.

so I'm lost. what can I do here?

also: what kind of halloween costume should I wear?

Can I use my DSL modem/router to act only as a wireless router?

ocha-no-mizu — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 16:04:33 -0800

Can I use my DSL modem/router to act only as a wireless router? I'm replacing my DSL service with cable internet. Instead of paying for the cable company's wireless router, I'd rather use my existing DSL modem/router if I can. Is it as simple as plugging the cable modem into the DSL modem/router?

For what it's worth, my DSL modem/router is a 2wire 2700HG-B.

DSL troubles

Beaufort — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:07:16 -0800

I have an Embarq DSL 660 modem (bridged) connected to a Dynex DX-WGRTR Wireless-G Broadband Router. The computer connected directly to the router can access the internet, but not my wireless laptop. What do I need to change to get my wireless to connect to the internet through my router and the DSL modem? Do I need to clone the connected pc’s MAC address, or just connect with PPPoE, or a stactic IP or something else with Embarq? I have never set up a router with DSL only with a cable modem. Thanks.

What is causing my DSL slowdown?

monkeybutt — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 18:30:41 -0800

What is causing my DSL slowdown? Ok...suddenly my home DSL connection became very unstable. I'm working on a very stable and relatively static computer setup at home. My main box is a Kubuntu 7.10 distro running on a Core2 box. My router is a Belkin Vision N1. Everything was working great until I called up AT&T (my DSL provider) and upgraded my service from 3MB to 6MB (and saved myself $5/mo in the process....go figure).

anyway about that time i noticed that pageviews seemed to take a LOT longer....sometimes 10+ seconds to bring up a website. quite often my browser will timeout waiting for a page to load. watching the handy speedometer on the router indicates very long periods of inactivity. when it *does* connect it truly does reflect the new speed of my connection (typically 4.5MB...which is pretty much what i expected). also my usenet newsreader has been reporting errors with literally everything it downloads. no idea why.

everything in this setup was working well for a long time *before* the upgrade. the only new factor is the call to AT&T that triggered some type of activity on my connection. i suspect i got switched to a different server or set of trunk lines or something and that new topology is buggy. how can i diagnose it further? are there any tools that can robustly test my setup/connection and expose a likely culprit in the path between me and the rest of the world? my calls to AT&T have resulted in nothing but "we tested your line and it appears to be fine."

and i feel i need to give a bit more information: yes i've rebooted/cycled everything in the setups. i've even replaced the router with an old Linksys i had sitting around to no avail. every machine in the house (2 linux machines, 1 windows box, 1 windows laptop and 2 macbook pros) experiences the symptoms and it doesn't matter if they are wireless, wired, connected to the router or going through a secondary switch.

thanks for any help

Home internet networks over large distances?

zaebiz — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:48:45 -0800

I have a wireless router in my house. 150 metres away I have a shed where I want to be able to use the internet on my laptop. There are electricity outlets in the house and in the shed but not in between. How do I get the signal from the house to my shed? For example are there battery-powered boosters that I could lay between the two places and recharge them at night? Can I buy a more powerful router? Can I buy some sort of signal magnifier to attach to the router? Or .... is it crazy to run a telephone cable all the way from the ADSL port in my house to the router in my shed? Any other ideas?

Help me fix my flaky wireless internet connection

schoolgirl report — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:07:13 -0800

What's up with my flaky wireless internet connection? The hardware: Toshiba Satellite M55, Win XP, Belkin wireless router with security enabled, your average Verizon business DSL service. The Intel PROSet Wireless application, which is what I use to configure and connect to wireless networks, typically shows I'm connected to the network at 24Mbps, sometimes more.

The situation: My laptop is maybe fifteen feet from the router, which is on the other side of a wall in a very old building. Until recently I had the router in my office, and everything played together fairly well. Now we've moved stuff around, and things have gone downhill.

If I click on, say, a YouTube video (or any old website, but YouTube is a better example), everything loads very slow, if at all. If I then open the Intel PROSet Wireless app, which causes it to refresh its list of available wireless networks, everything starts to load properly, i.e., the progress bar on the video starts to move right along. This improved loading speed lasts for a bit, until it doesn't, and I have to launch PROSet again to get things moving. Or at least I think that's having an effect. It's entirely possible it's coincidence, as it doesn't always work, but it sure seems like it's helping.

If I take my laptop home, I get pretty solid performance even if I'm two floors above my wireless router (security not enabled -- I live in the boonies).

Any thoughts, or tests to help me narrow it down?

Inconsitent wireless DSL connectivity

Scottk — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 12:30:11 -0800

Join me in trying to solve a wireless DSL modem mystery. As usual, there is I am using this Intellinet wireless DSL modem / router. I am able to maintain a strong signal to the router via my wireless XP laptop, but the DSL connection itself is very inconsistent. It seems to happen most often when I am playing online poker, if that is any help.

Also, hardwiring my laptop to the router with a CAT 5 cable seems to remedy the issue. I'd like to know why the wireless function is having such a hard time maintaining the DSL connection.

As always, any responses are greatly appreciated.

DSL basics. What hardware do I need?

vacapinta — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 15:06:12 -0800

SanFranciscoWiFi: I currently have DSL service with AT&T. It came with a DSL modem/wireless router thingy from 2WIRE. Can I replace the 2Wire? If so, what are my options? Please speak to me as if I were a child because in the area of networking, I am.

Trying to get a grip on port forwarding

zek — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 13:37:13 -0800

Computer question: How is it possible for my computer and various p2p/network game apps to communicate with the Internet when it's obvious that all my ports are closed? Basically I spent this morning trying to get a p2p client working. It said I was firewalled. I ran port tests for the client and the general port tests on whatsmyip.org, and they said that no ports were open and they were refusing packets. It was only when I went into my router that I discovered that no port forwarding was enabled... I set this up and now everything works.

Therefore why is it that some p2p and network games DO run, even with a fouled up port setup? I've been able to run Shareaza, a few network games, and other stuff, and even service outgoing files with inoperative ports. I considered that as evidence that maybe the ports were working, though obviously I was wrong. So how is it these programs were able to run?

Heck, how does http and smtp traffic get out when the modem and router are blocking all the ports? And if web & email use a tiny subset of "open ports", why don't trojans use these ports to do their dirty work? Or are those ports invincible?

Packets, and Gateways, and Routers, Oh My!

rabble — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 21:17:37 -0800

I like to pretend that I'm a big networking wiz, but in reality, I don't even have the wits to play one on TV. Either way, I've been looking for something a little more robust in the router department for my home network, and I think I've found it with the Linksys WRT54G + DD-WRT firmware (v23, 12/25/05 release). And here's where the fun begins - Getting it to manage my DSL connection. My ISP is Qwest. Previously, I ran their Actiontec gateway in Transparent briding mode (DHCP & NAT) off through to my craptacular D-Link router. Even though Qwest uses PPPOA, the D-Link didn't have that option, but using PPPOE worked somehow. I wasn't getting full thoroughput (the gateway was receiving 7mb/sec, but I was only getting 1.5mb/sec), but it worked.

Now, with the upgrade, I've got myself in the position of having WAAAAY more router power than I know what to do with. I basically need a step by step guide as to how to get this damned thing to work with Qwest DSL, for the reasonablyintelligentbutnotsohotwithnetworking kind of guy. I could go into all sorts of details as to how I've TRIED setting it up, but I think that will only confuse the situation at this point. For those who aren't familiar with the DD-WRT firmware, here's a demo page of the web interface, which no doubt will help in explaining the specifics of my problem to me.

I consider myself very technically inclined, but heavy duty networking is a SERIOUS weak spot of mine. No need to dumb it down too far, as I understand the basics, but I'm no pro, either.

The basics:
Gateway/DSL Modem: Actiontec in Transparent Bridging mode (192.168.0.1)
Router: WRT54G w/ DD-WRT v23 (192.168.1.1)
Qwest Primary DNS: 205.171.3.65
Qwest Secondary DNS: 205.171.2.65

Thank you - And, oh yeah, Happy New Year to ya'll out in mefiland as well!

Configuring a Zoom X3 5660A router/modem for Bit Torrent

Marquis — Sun, 08 May 2005 07:25:41 -0800

I recently bought a Zoom X3 5660A DSL router/modem/all-in-one to use with my Apple Airport Extreme Base Station for internet. Everything's working fine, except Azureus (Bit Torrent). Although I can download/share torrents, they've all got yellow smilies - and the configuration wizard shows a NAT Error when I test port 16881 (which I've configured Az. to use).

This, obviously, means that port forwarding isn't happening correctly. These are the things I've done so far:

1) I turned off Azureus' UPNP auto option, as suggested.

2) I changed my Azureus port to 16881, in case my ISP was blocking the default (6881).

3) Confirmed that the firewalls are off on the Airport and Modem/router.

4) I set up a static IP address by doing following some online instructions and doing this:

System Pref -) Network -) Airport -) TCP/IP
Configure: Manually
IP Address: 10.0.1.201
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Router: 10.0.1.1
DNS Servers: 10.0.1.1

5) I configured my Airport's Port Mapping by adding a bunch of entries (16881-16889) like this:

Public Port: 16881
Private IP Address: 10.0.1.201
Private Port: 16881

6) I reset the airport.

Most of the forum-post support for configuring the Zoom X3 for BT is based on the 5660 modem, which has a "Virtual Server" button on the control panel which you can use to configure port forwarding. The 5660A does not have this feature. Sooo... I tried adapting these instructions, which are for another modem but were translatable.

8) I added IP Filtering rules, as here. (On my setup, unlike theirs, there were already many IP Filtering rules. Azureus didn't work any better with the existing ones + my new ones, the existing ones + only the BT-related one, or everything deleted except my three new rules.)

9) I added the NAT rule as here.

Anyway - no dice. Yellow smilies and NAT Errors.

At this point I've reset the modem/router to its default settings.

Some suspicions about things which still may be wrong:

A) On the IP Filtering page of my control panel, if I click the "Session" button, it states "IP Filter not enabled". I can't find anywhere that says "Enable IP Filter", though.

B) One of the problems may just be the interaction between my airport and the router side of the Zoom... Maybe I need to turn off its router features? I don't really know how to do this... I read somewhere that this was effected by "enabling Bridging", which I did, but that sort of broke everything and it's what spurred the hard-reset to defaults.

Sorry for all the complicated explanation - hopefully it's enough background that the problem can be solved by someone brilliant and insightful out there. Metafilter - please help me!

Help me fix my iMac!

JDC8 — Fri, 10 Sep 2004 14:39:08 -0800

iMacFilter. I'm attempting to connect my slot-loading iMac to a SBC DSL router. I can't get the iMac to recognize the DSL connection or locate the modem.

In my attempts to rectify this, I reorganized the hard drive using Discwarrior. Now the computer somehow boots up with MacOS 9.2, even after an OSX re-install. Help!

Why does my wireless signal speed vary?

gottabefunky — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 09:44:47 -0800

Home wireless setup: why does my signal speed vary? [mi] On our home wireless network (Verizon DSL, Actiontec gateway, Netgear MR814v2 router, Win XP all around), we had two laptops working fine. Signal strength varies, but signal speed is always 11 mpbs.

Now with my new desktop and its Linksys USB54G adapter, not only does my signal strength vary like crazy, but the signal speed goes from 2 to 5 to 11 mbps, sometimes within seconds, with no apparent pattern. As I type it's 2 mpbs, strength low, but two minutes later it'll be 11 mpbs, strength high.

I can't seem to get a straight answer on why. Dell says it's "normal" for a desktop setup to do this. Linksys says no, but since all the firmware and drivers are updated, it's gotta be a problem with the adapter. Netgear can't help either. Verizon and I are not on speaking terms.

Any advice? Could it be an IP address thing? Some sort of interference? All the computers are within 25' of the router, and we live in an old adobe with thick walls, if that makes any difference.

Wireless Networking

seanyboy — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 02:11:43 -0800

Wireless Networking Question. I want to use wireless networking to connect a DSL router to both my PVR & playstation 2. How do I do it? [M.I.] The PVR and PS2 have ethernet ports and are next to each other. I could easily connect these with a router, but then that router would need wireless access to the wireless router upstairs.

I've seen adverts for Wireless Bridges, but these all seem to have only one port. Can I just plug this into a router's uplink port? Are there any good Wireless Bridges out there with more than one port? Although price is an issue, I'm looking for a fairly good looking solution.

Cheap, reliable NAT router?

majick — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 11:11:28 -0800

I need a cheapo NAT router to plug into my DSL bridge, stick in a closet, and ignore forever. I'm used to using a dual-homed Linux box with ipchains/ipfilter, and I have a kind of wacky network configuration, but it's time to downgrade to something smaller, more energy-efficient and quieter. Does anyone have a particular model to suggest? A few pertinent details: I use a single static IP address on the external interface and have a DHCP server on the internal network, so DHCP client or server features are not desirable at all. I've already got a wireless bridge, so WiFi features aren't useful either. My 100baseT switch still has ports open, so I don't need a router with additional ports on it. I just want something that will do single-IP NAT (or port translation) and has one internal and one external ethernet interface.

Several inbound ports are forwarded across the existing firewall to make my servers visible -- the usual 22, 25, 80, and 443 -- but I'm planning to add a few more services and occasionally need to punch more holes on a temporary basis for Bittorrent and Gnutella traffic for particular clients, so limitations on that feature would be very bad, and it should be remotely configurable from the internal network. Hackability in terms of firmware customization might be nice, but like SNMP monitoring, it's neat but not a feature I'm going to base my decision on.

The budget for this product is somewhere in the neighborhood of $100.

I get the feeling that just about anything would be a somewhat close fit for me, but since I've been using heavy equipment with a deeply customized configuration to do the job for the last several years, picky about configurability, need more features than most people yet don't need others, and want something I'm not going to have to yank out of the closet and reset more than a couple of times a year, it seems like a good idea to Ask: who knows about one of these little "home office" type NAT routers that can replace my big, noisy, power-hungry dinosaur?

Sharing DSL

daver — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 09:17:21 -0800

How do I share a MSN DSL connection between multiple computers? The DSL Modem is a NetDSL 800, and I'd like to be able to connect each PC to the DSL independently (Not with 'internet sharing'). PC's are XP, and I already have a router to use (and plenty of experience routing on DSL with static IPs).