A friend of mine has Comcast Internet, and is experiencing numerous “stalling” occurrences during her Internet sessions. Her XP Pro PC is hardwired to a Linksys BEFW11S4 router, which also feeds a laptop and a TiVo wirelessly. Router is connected to a SurfBoard modem. Her PC is fully patched, and I’ve run Ad-Aware and Spybot.
I tried to trace the route of the incoming cable back to the entrance point on the house yesterday (having some problems because the entire basement has a drop ceiling). It appears the incoming cable runs to a Regal DS4DGH10 splitter. From there, a lead goes to a Regal GRS3DGH 110db EMI Isolator, and the lead to the cable modem takes off from there.
She called Comcast this week, and the tech who showed up said he couldn’t find anything wrong (he didn’t look at anything in the basement, though). I have the receipt the tech left, and it has some numbers about signal levels, but I have no idea if they are good or bad. The TiVo, which is using a DLink USB wireless adapter, was showing Poor (24%) to Marginal (28%) connectivity most of the time I was there, with an occasional jump to Fair (58%).
I downloaded a firmware upgrade for the Linksys router, and the download speed started out at 113 kbps, and gradually went up, never breaking 200 kbps. Applied the upgrade, but no change. Noticed the Internet light was flashing constantly on the router, which looks odd to me (my Linksys WRT54G, on a DSL line, has a constant Internet light).
Any suggestions as to what might be wrong gratefully appreciated, or even a pointer to somewhere I can see what an “optimal” cable Internet wiring pattern should be (I seem to remember seeing that the incoming cable should use a special 2-way (Internet and TV) splitter first, then further splitters on the “TV” side as needed). I’d like to eliminate any cable miswiring before looking any further as to why Internet Explorer is stalling.