Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with internet and networking

How to make the music stop skipping?

st starseed — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 10:44:10 -0800

Calling all network experts...How can I make the music on my PC stop skipping? Greetings...okay, trying to provide all relevant details: My main PC in my den/playroom stores my entire MP3 collection. It's a fine computer, and I never have any issues playing music on it.

It is one of two PCs on my home's wireless network.

The other PC on the network is out in the living room. It's a perfectly fine, not-ancient (2005 or so) laptop hooked up to my home theater system with a sole purpose of playing music through said system.

Yet whenever it's playing, about three times per song (so about once every 90 or so seconds), the song will just stop and then pick right back up about 2 seconds later. It's almost like a buffering effect...the music is playing, then it disappears, then it's back.

Does anyone know why this is happening, and if there's any way to fix it?

Potentially key details:

1. The MP3s are not stored on the laptop; they are stored on the main PC...which shares them with the laptop. (I like it this way so I only have to maintain one library.)

2. There's a wall between the den and the living room.

3. Both machines run Windows XP (fully updated with service packs, etc.).

4. The cable modem and router are always going strong.

How to separate open wifi from wired network.

Jackie_Treehorn — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 05:37:12 -0800

How can I offer guests in my home or business wifi that is separate from my home or business network? I'd like to be able to easily offer guests in my home or business free, unsecured wireless access, but at the same time not allow them access to my other wired or secured wireless network.

How would I do that?

Thank you!

Specific social networking?

Kattiara17 — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 08:33:00 -0800

Best topic-specific networking/community/cloud sites? Recently I've discovered a few of the more topic specific networking/information sharing sites: Snooth for wine, Etsy for homemade crafts, Ravelry for knitting. I feel like there must be other great sites like these that I'm just not aware of, and would love to find them. I'm not looking for general social networking sites like Facebook/Myspace/Twitter/etc., but ones that actually have some sort of focus. Anyone have any to suggest? :)

Wireless Network Lag

bobertdude — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:18:37 -0800

What are some ways I can improve latency over a wireless network? When i do the ping test on google i get an average of 90ms, which is not good enough for online games. Are there any ways you can improve latency over a network? I have a Wireless G adapter with 3 computers connected to it. Switching from wireless is not an option for me. Please ask me as many questions as you have to about my network and I'll be happy to answer.

PS - I switched over to OpenDNS. Is that bad news for my network latency?

How to make pages load faster?

H. Roark — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 10:47:03 -0800

What can I do about some hosts making web-page loading very slow? Specifically, ad.doubleclick.net is killing me. Only in the last month or so, but sites like metafilter take ~1minute to load. This is Firefox on osx. Usually it says "connecting to ad.doubleclick.net...".

A simple "ping" command looks not to promising either:



computer:~/projects/datamining chris$ ping ad.doubleclick.net

PING ad.3ad.doubleclick.net (216.73.86.152): 56 data bytes

--- ad.3ad.doubleclick.net ping statistics ---

234 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss

and a traceroute seems to go nowhere?



computer:~] chris% /usr/sbin/traceroute ad.doubleclick.net

traceroute to ad.3ad.doubleclick.net (216.73.86.152), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets

 1  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  1.352 ms  0.615 ms  0.534 ms

 2  * * *

 3  * * *

 4  * * *

 5  * * *

 6  * * *

 7  * * *

Vista 64 drops Internet connection?

pghjezebel — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:29:02 -0800

What is causing my Vista 64 PC to keep dropping its Internet connection? I keep losing my internet connection on my PC, which is running Vista 64bit. I'm at loss for what is causing it. After searching online, I've tried the following solutions:

-Made sure Vista is not putting my Network adapter (Model: Realtek rtl8168c(p)/8111c(p) family pci-e GBE NIC) to sleep.
-Disabled DHCP and DNS on our router (which is a Linksys RTP300 from Vonage).
- netsh winsock reset

None of these suggestions have worked. Sometimes I stay connected for a while, and then I'm offline again. Sometimes I need to restart, other times it will reconnect itself within a matter of seconds. It also seems to kick me offline more frequently when both my husband and I are online at the same time.

My next actions were going to be to try a different network card and/or router, but any suggestions would be appreciated!

Cable internet + secure wireless network = outer ring of hell

johnofjack — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:49:37 -0800

I have a problems connecting to my wireless network, on one computer only. Other networks work for this computer. Other computers work on this network. Long & convoluted one here, so I'll try to be brief.

New internet: Cox Cable (switched over from DSL). Wireless network with a password required and WPA-Personal encryption. Linksys wireless router (WRT54GS v7). Linksys wireless card (WMP54GS). Windows 2000.

After much futzing about yesterday, I found that I had to clone the MAC address off my 10/100 card to the router so that the other computers in the apartment could access the internet. So I did, and they could, but now I can't--at least, not when connecting to the network wirelessly.

The message I usually get is "You are connected to the access point, but the internet cannot be found." Except I doubt that I am, because I usually can't go to the router's setup screen (except when I can). And I usually can't access my own computer by internal IP (except when I can).

BUT sometimes, after several tries, that very same password that I've been putting in will finally work and I'll be both on the network and allowed to use the internet. When this happens, the internet connection will be incredibly slow. I mean "timeouts on google.com and a half-dozen forced relaods before it finally loads" slow. But only for me--all the other computers on the network (macs, OS X) can authenticate with these same details and load things blazingly fast.

And sometimes I can't associate with my wireless network at all.

The complications / puzzling bits:
I can log on to my neighbor's open wireless and there is no problem whatsoever. Everything loads and it loads quickly. But I don't want to leech his bandwidth and I don't want to do anything like banking on an unsecured network.

I can run a 10/100 cable to the modem directly and everything works.

I can run a 10/100 cable to the router directly, disable the wireless card, and wait a bit, and everything works.

I've read all sorts of speculation about what the cause might be, and tried the solutions, but so far none of them work.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled my firewall.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled my wireless card.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled the software managing the wireless connection.

I've power-cycled the router and modem, turned them back on and set all the details up again from scratch.

I've uninstalled my TCP/IP whatsit and reinstalled it.

I knew that several of those were almost certainly not the cause of the problem because I can log on to my neighbor's network and go anywhere online, quickly.

So, dear AskMe: why won't my wireless card talk to my router?

Internet/Tech Industry in Buffalo, NY?

rocketpup — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 12:56:56 -0800

What is the environment like for Internet/techie types in Buffalo, NY? I'll soon be moving to sunny Buffalo and I'm interested in any information the hive might have regarding Internet/tech-related professional organizations, tech companies small and large and any other sorts of things that might make an Internet developer gone semi-management feel at home. Both full-on nerd and more business-y information is welcome.

I've read some stuff about the much vaunted (between 1999 and 2002) Buffalo Byte Belt, but haven't seen much recent information. Is there more than frayed fiber sticking out of the ground these days?

WiMax: yea or nay?

cyrusdogstar — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:04:30 -0800

Looking into potentially getting WiMax, specifically from a company called TowerStream, at my place of work. Has anyone here used a commercial WiMax provider (TowerStream or otherwise)? Our primary goal is getting better upstream (we currently have 768Kb); all asymetric solutions cap out around 2Mb, and symmetric solutions are typically very expensive. We can get a WiMax symmetric connection of 8Mb for almost half the $/Mb of an equivalent bonded T1 or partial T3, which is why it's pretty darn appealing.

Trying to find anecdotes and/or potential pitfalls with migrating to WiMax providers, as I don't see any obvious drawbacks just by thinking about it (weather: apparently not a problem; connectivity: multiple potential antennas are available in our area so we get decent redundancy; otherwise comparable to T1/T3 in terms of SLAs, etc).

Plenty of beaches, but where are the best waves?

Funmonkey1 — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:35:20 -0800

InternetFilter: Besides MetaFilter, whats the must read of the day? Tired of perusing the usual suspects for cool things on the internet. As I grow older find myself a bit less enthused over reddit, fark, digg, etc. As we all know, Metafilter is the holy grail of knowledge and all things fantastic, but I find myself wondering if there are a couple of pit stops missing before arriving here that will make my internet time better. Thinking along the lines of science, art, sociology, psychology, music and more. Any and all suggestions much appreciated.

Help me show him the truth

arniec — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:15:16 -0800

Help me convince my friend of a basic networking truth. He sent me an e-mail saying he was assigning static IPs to all the devices on his home network so the signal would be stronger. More details inside: My friend has the following set-up: His cable modem goes to his router. His router feeds wall jacks throughout his house. In his basement is a single CAT-5 wall jack, but since he has several devices there he got a switch, so the wall jack goes to the switch, which then goes to his DirectTV and his XBox 360.

This worked fine in this set-up for months. But a couple weeks ago he stopped being able to receive On Demand programming. If he plugs the DirectTV right into the wall jack it works, but through the switch it does not.

He then assigned his DirectTV and his XBox 360 static IPs and the On Demand programming worked through the switch.

He believes the switch is causing weaker signal and the static IP is strengthening the signal to his DirectTV which, as an IT network tech, I know is NOT the case. And I've told him this but I cannot convince him that it's not a signal issue since he has seen the "evidence" that a static IP fixed the On Demand issue that a static IP didn't.

So (a) why would his DirectTV not work through a switch with a dynamic IP and (b) How can I explain in complete laymen's terms the fundamental networking essentials concepts of digital signal transmission through shielded twisted pair cable is NOT effected by the IP addresses being static or dynamic?

XP and Vista laptops won't access net at same time :/

debu — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:54:43 -0800

I'm setting up a wireless network in my house and am having a problem getting my XP laptop and my roommates Vista laptop on at the same time. I can get one or the other accessing the internet (when right clicking on network and repairing). I'm assuming this is an IP conflict since when I get her Vista laptop accessing the net, a yellow triangle with an exclamtion mark pops up in my task bar and then my laptop won't access the net. My guess is I have to set up a static IP for both?

A new kind of dial-up internet hell.

Jimbob — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 02:11:25 -0800

Archaic Windows dial-up networking question; why do I randomly lose internet connectivity (with dial-up still online) and can't get it back without restarting the computer? OS: Windows Vista

Due to a recent move to an internet black hole (Tasmania), we've had to resort to dial-up internet. We've been having a problem where we will randomly (as far as we can tell) lose network connectivity. Browsers (Firefox, IE, Opera, whatever) will no longer access sites, saying the sites "Exist but cannot be reached".

Similarly, other software (Yahoo messenger, Putty!) will also refuse to connect.

However, if I open up a command prompt, I can happily ping, nslookup, tracert without a problem.

Killing the dial-up connection and redialing doesn't help at all. Rebooting the PC fixes the problem 100% of the time.

I've tried disabling the only thing I can think of that might cause a problem, the anti-virus software (Avast!), but that doesn't help.

Any ideas how I can diagnose this problem? Why would every program that accesses the internet claim it can't connect, but low-level command-line utilities can?

Free linux dynamic dns hosting?

Thoth — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 08:39:35 -0800

What is the best Linux friendly free dynamic DNS hosting provider? I'm in the process of setting up a server at home that I would like to access from work etc, so I'm after a good free dns service that features an automatic update client which runs reliably on Linux.

A google search of "dynamic dns" and many other permutations thereof throws up what seems to be about a million "free" dns providers, so I would be eager to find out if there is any consensus on what's good out there.

Thanks very much!

For now, I'll be using Xbox Dead. (handle: StupidComputer!)

reductiondesign — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:03:40 -0800

PowerBook&NetworkingFilter: Dialogue box freezes after I choose System Prefs > Sharing. Help? Alright. I'm trying to bridge the connection between my wireless network and my ethernet port (in order to get my Xbox 360 online). Trouble is, once I click on Sharing in the System Preferences menu, it stays on loading forever. (Forever = I let it run for forty-eight hours. Nothing.) All other programs work while this happens. Nothing else appears to be wrong with my system. Any ideas what might cause this?

Details:
PowerBook G4 w/ Leopard
Wireless adapter and ethernet both built-in
Wireless network is password-protected
Linksys router

I'll respond to any questions within a day--more details available if necessary.

Computer exposed to internet without a firewall, now what do I do?

miasma — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:28:48 -0800

My computer has recently been exposed to the wild internet without being behind a firewall. I'm running Windows 2000 without a software firewall. What should I do now to clean my machine and make sure it hasn't been subject to an exploit? I made the mistake of putting a gaming device in the DMZ of my router for a short while. When I came back today, the dynamically assigned IP had switched, and it was my computer that was in the DMZ. As a result, my computer has been exposed to the wild internet without a firewall. I have all the latest service packs and hotfixes installed. What else should I do to make sure that my machine hasn't been exploited?

I have Spybot S&D for spyware and AVG for virus checking.

Bridge that Gap!

dance — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 06:24:12 -0800

In a similar vein to a previous question of mine, after successfully tackling that problem, I am now again trying to 'bridge that gap'. This time a neighbouring house in our community would like to be wired up for internet. The houses in our community are networking with telephone wire. A G.HDSL bridge/router in each house separates data from telephone and functions as a switch. Other hubs/switches/routers can be daisy chained off of it as normal.

This house is a little further away than the previous house (in that situation I ran a regular CAT5e cable through an 25m existing conduit from a switch in one house to a switch in the other) so I'm not sure if the maximum possible CAT5 length of 100m will cut it. I don't know the exact distance to the house. It's probably about 70m ATCF. In addition, there's no conduit this time so I've no idea how I'd work that angle.

What are my options?

- Wifi mesh with the highly recommended Open Mesh technology?
- Fibre? I know next to nothing about fibre for networks. I know it's a based on light, that it's a good thing for speed etc and is expensive. That's it.
- Outdoor CAT5(e)/6 strung up in the trees somehow?
- Attaching an identical bridge/router to the telephone cable in their house and seeing if data magically appears at the other end? I've heard someone very non-technical mention lack of capacity about this but that can be taken with a big pinch of salt.
- Rooftop wifi 'beacon'?
- Others I haven't thought of?

Thanks a lot

Creating a private wired network, but using a shared wireless Internet connection

Anonymous — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 07:01:10 -0800

Creating a private wired network, but using a shared wireless Internet connection So I have a slightly unusual home networking situation. I share an apartment which has a wireless network (let's call it Gerald), but I have several computers, only some of which have wireless. I'd like to get them all Internet access as simply as possible, so I am thinking of getting a single device like a generic Linksys router with wired ports, plugging all of my devices into that, then using this as a client to connect to Gerald.

But it's a bit more complicated; the router which runs Gerald (which I don't have any admin access to) seems to block anything that is not straight TCP/IP traffic; I can't see the network file shares on one computer from another on Gerald. As this is a shared Internet connection, this makes sense from a security point of view (I have no desire to see my roommates or neighbor's files, thanks; living with their unpleasant habits is enough) but I'd really like to see my network shares (without hacking around with stuff like Hamachi), as one of my PCs acts as a file server. So, can a generic wireless router connect me to Gerald (and the internet beyond), as well as creating a more private wired network that allows for network shares, etc? Any pointers on how to configure it for that? Bonus points for any solution that don't involve expensive devices; I'm on a tight budget.

Ghost bit-torrent tracker

daksya — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 07:50:39 -0800

How do torrents work? I thought I knew. Something like this, basically:

Person A wants to share files. She creates a .torrent which contains
file-list +
pieces & their checksums +
tracker address +
maybe some other stuff

She uploads it to tracker, which loads the torrent, and if there's an associated directory, also gets it indexed.

Persons B, C, D come across the listing in the index and open the .torrent in their client. Client contacts tracker which, in short, returns list of seeds & peers. Client contacts seeds & peers and individually tries to hook up all connections it can. Enter DHT, which means, I think, is that you get peer lists from peers you already are in touch with.

***

Now it turns out that a pretty famous public tracker went down a couple of months ago, but with some lingering hope of its resurrection still present. I found a torrent on one of the *novas, with the only tracker listed being that of downed-site. On a whim, I open it in utorrent, and although tracker status is "No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.", I get some seeds and the torrent is "working".

My question: where did it get the list of seeds from?

If it's from the downed-site, is the moral that it's "down" but not really?

Can I get a wired (ethernet) connection off a wireless network?

TonyRobots — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 06:14:52 -0800

Can I get a wired (ethernet) connection off a wireless network? I have free access to my landlord's wifi. I also have a couple of devices (most importantly series 1 tivo "hacked" to have an ethernet card inside) that require a wired connection. I have a Linksys WRT54G wireless router with DD-WRT firmware installed.

Assume I don't have physical access to the landlord's cable modem/router, though I might be able to finagle it (once or twice) if I ask nicely.

This should be doable, but for some reason I'm not seeing the solution. Can you help out?

DHCP and VLAN configuration help needed.

odinsdream — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:56:52 -0800

DHCP and switch VLAN configuration help needed. I have a DHCP server connected to one port of a managed Netgear switch. I'd like to configure VLANs on this switch for separate office areas, each with their own subnet. I know how to do this with static addresses, since I would just manually configure each computer with the appropriate subnet. How can I hand these addresses out automatically with DHCP?

I'm also not sure how to make one port of the switch (connected to the DHCP server/router) part of each VLAN. I understand how to place a port into an untagged or tagged state, and have it be a member of a VLAN with another set of ports.

Much appreciated!

Is this IP spoofing?

simonw — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 04:42:59 -0800

Someone posted a spam comment on my blog that came from IP address "192.168.0.165". Since that IP address is reserved for private networks, how on earth did they do that? Is this "IP spoofing"? If so, how does it work?

Need help sharing an EVDO broadband connection among multiple computers

mattholomew — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 10:48:37 -0800

Need help sharing an EVDO broadband connection among multiple computers I'm trying to help my brother who lives in an area without cable or DSL. He just recently got a Sprint Novatel wireless Ovation U720 EVDO modem. I have not seen it but from my understanding it connects directly to his laptop via USB. He would like to share this connection among multiple computers wirelessly. Is there a way to connect this modem to a router or otherwise share the connection? I don't think I've seen any routers that would accept an incoming USB connection, but I am no networking wiz.

Thanks in advance!

Cisco PIX 501 Firewall

kaozity — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 05:14:45 -0800

Can the Cisco PIX 501 be upgraded with any firmware so that it is IP Version 6 (IPv6) Compatible? We have a Cisco PIX 501 as seen in the link below...

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/vpndevc/ps2030/ps2031/index.html

Is there any way for the firmware to be upgraded so that it is IP Version 6 (IPv6) Compatible? If not, is there a comparable router that we can purchase that is?

How to map a network drive over the Internet?

c:\awesome — Tue, 15 May 2007 14:32:03 -0800

What's the easiest, most secure way to map a network drive over the Internet? Situation: two computers, one laptop (Vista Home Basic), one desktop (XP Pro). I have a few drives on the desktop mapped to the laptop, which works great -- but I'd like for it to work (as seemlessly as it does now) when I leave the house and connect to the Internet from a different connection than that of the desktop.

Can Windows do this without any extra software? If not, what's the best (free, preferably) software that does this?

I'm not looking for VNC, as I've already got that setup.