Frustrating internet drop-out problem

[mathewdbarlow]

I am experiencing a problem with my internet connection dropping out, its happening every couple of minutes or so. The interesting thing is that whilst my internet is down, bit torrents continue to download fine at the same speed in the background.

I am using vista and the diagnostic usually points towards the DNS server being unreachable or "cannot reach website using DNS" although it also comes up with various other reasons less frequently.

I have an 8mb BT ADSL connection. I recently ditched the Home Hub as i thought this may be causing the problem and replaced it with a Netgear DG834PN...but the problem remains.

Any help would be appreciated as it is very annoying!

[Splash]

Are you connected wired or wireless?

[mathewdbarlow]

Wireless, but there is no problem with the wireless connection as it is still transmitting data for the torrent downloads.

[b0redom]

Manually apply your DNS servers to Vista - you can get these from the admin panel in your access point. Very occasionally I get this problem too with my XP install. Doing that fixed it.

[adam1701]

Manually apply your DNS servers to Vista - you can get these from the admin panel in your access point. Very occasionally I get this problem too with my XP install. Doing that fixed it.

i had to do this with my vista.

[mathewdbarlow]

Is it important to have a second DNS server as BT only supplied me with information for one when I spoke to them?

[b0redom]

Only if the 1st one fails :-)

It's likely that BT will have some load balancing gear in front of the DNS server they sent you, so I wouldn't worry for the time being, a 2nd DNS server only adds resilience.

[mathewdbarlow]

Hold on.
Are we talking about the DNS addresses in TCP/IPv4 settings in my connection? I set up a static IP address so I could enable some port forwarding in these settings.

I only have a primary DNS server specified.

Is anyone aware of the BT secondary DNS address?

[Splash]

Wireless, but there is no problem with the wireless connection as it is still transmitting data for the torrent downloads.

Don't suppose you have limited your torrent client have you? This is an age-old issue with bittorrent saturating bandwidth and causing this kind of issue.

[b0redom]

Hold on.
Are we talking about the DNS addresses in TCP/IPv4 settings in my connection?

Yes.

[mathewdbarlow]

Don't suppose you have limited your torrent client have you? This is an age-old issue with bittorrent saturating bandwidth and causing this kind of issue.

It does it even with no torrent client running.

Spoke to BT customer support (I must be getting desperate). There response is that it is a problem with my router and they cannot understand why I have changed from the BT Homehub. They also tried to fob me off with some rubbish that it might be the ADSL trying to readjust to the new router and reach an optimum speed.
I will not be calling them again.

In the meantime I am going to try moving the router and changing bands.

[GoNz0]

you should try capping max connections in the torrent setup, i used to get the same as i was overloading my connection, even though i would often only be using 10% of my bandwidth.

does this happen after a fresh reboot of the PC and Router with no torrents running ?

[mathewdbarlow]

How many connections should I limit the torrent client to??

I have an 8meg connection and live right next to the exchange so it connects at about 7.4.

[GoNz0]

personally i limited the max connections to 130, still usable at 150 but at 130 i found i could surf without issue again

[b0redom]

It's usually the upstream which is saturated. Don't forget you're only 512kbps, so limit that to 20-50K.

[GoNz0]

oh yeh i cap upstream to 15k for that reason, sorry forgot to mention it.