Saturday, March 22, 2008

Guess it's time for a new router

My internet connection is through a router.

The cable modem sends the internet signal to a router.  Two things come out of my router:  a wired cable that connects to my desktop, and a wireless signal that my laptop can ride off of.  Everyone is happy.

Except, yesterday morning, my internet connection started going all flukey on me.  Not loading pages.  I thought it was because I war running a virus scan at the same time, so I paused the scan, and it kept happening.

Today it happened more.  And, unlike yesterday, it wouldn't fix itself if I just kept hitting reload.

Decided to diagnose the problem.  Step one:  eliminate router from the system, and see if I can get internet when plugging the cable modem directly into the computer.

Answer:  I can.

And, dammit, it's faster than through the router.  Here I was, thinking that the wired cable was just passing the signal through the router, when, apparently, the little detour was taking some speed away.

The irony here is that, since my desktop is so fast, I've barely used my laptop for internet access since the day I bought the desktop.  Sure, I'll still take it with me when travelling.  But I used to use the laptop to check my email when I was still in bed in the mornings, and now I just haul out of bed to the desktop, since it's so darned zippy.  So the router was in my system and slowing me down for no reason at all.

Bye-bye Mr. Router.  It was nice knowing you.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I never thought that could be a possibility....hmmm I just might try that and see if it works for me. Wishing you a wonderful, loving holiday! (Hugs) Indigo