Okay, this isn't something I usually do... But I'm pretty much stuck these days.
Ever since I bought my new machine (running Windows 7) last year, or possibly more recently than that, I've been having Internet connection problems.
It all just adds up to this: if I'm sending too many HTTP REQUESTS, they're being DENIED.
An example: I'm loading a torrent file. Many requests, I guess. After a while, if I'm trying to browse the web, I'll get a generic error saying there's no connection available. Usually, doing a manual ping on wedge.org will work, doing a ping on a more obscure website will work so I guess the DNS is working...
Another example: forget about torrents, let's say I'm simply online with no download in progress. Launching Opera or Chrome or Firefox with hundreds of tabs in them. Chrome will still attempt to load its 500+ tabs immediately and miserably fails. Firefox is okay because it only loads tabs when you activate them. Opera is 'smarter' about it and load only a few tabs at a time, but it doesn't change the fact that after it's loaded a dozen tabs or so, the rest sends me network error messages.
One thing that's even sillier is that if I'm downloading a large file through HTTP (in my browser), and then I launch a series of requests that crashes my connection, the large file will STILL keep downloading. In fact, any ongoing requests are still being honored, it's only the new requests that fail and send a network error.
After months of pesting against this, and having to reboot my modem before I can resume my load, I discovered that I could simply unplug my Ethernet cable. After a few hours I tried deactivating the Ethernet connection from my network settings in Windows 7, and then immediately reactivating it. To my surprise, it actually worked.
So, so far so good... "My network card is faulty."
It just so happens that I have a second Ethernet port in my computer... Okay, so I'll just use it, right?
Wrong. I've got *exactly* the same problem on it. It works in the beginning, and then fails miserably until I do the deactivate/activate combo trick on it. Then I can 'reload' more tabs until it crashes again, I do the trick again, I manually reload more tabs, etc, etc...
Still, it's not 'normal'. Considering that both network cards do it, it's probably not a hardware failure -- rather a crappy setting in Windows 7 or something that does flood control.
But I have yet to find out who the culprit is. And it drives me crazy because, well, I realize it's one of the things that makes me spend less time loading websites and more time watching films. It's not good for Wedge.
If anyone out there is a network specialist, please help. :)
Posted: November 28th, 2012, 10:58 AM
I feel I should also point out that browsing my local Apache install works even when the network is failing. So it tends to conflict with the idea that the problem happens *before* the request reaches the network card...
Annoying, no?