Messages

My apologies to all. I have been working on my problem constantly for the past two weeks now, but by taking an alternate path. I took a path where I assumed that that the problem was either a router hardware or software problem. For roughly the past week, I have been looking at different routers and finally settled on a router package called, 'Google wifi'. This was a good move and I have my network up and running again.

Google wifi has provided very good wifi signals AND the ability to maintain my internal network via ethernet. The documentation on the product was fair, but usable. In comparison, the documentation that I found with other routers was poor to absolutely awful.

I thank all of you for your input, particularly Dieselboy, who obviously spend a fair amount of time studying my problem. I know that this thread will continue to be here, but I copied the entire thread to my computer so that I will have it for future reference. There are several thoughts that I want review further and keep in mind for the future.

Four thumbs up for the help I received here!!

Jim

[ping 172.217.10.36PING 172.217.10.36 (172.217.10.36) 56(84) bytes of data.64 bytes from 172.217.10.36: icmp_seq=104 ttl=57 time=14.1 ms64 bytes from 172.217.10.36: icmp_seq=161 ttl=57 time=13.5 ms64 bytes from 172.217.10.36: icmp_seq=162 ttl=57 time=12.4 ms^C--- 172.217.10.36 ping statistics ---195 packets transmitted, 3 received, 98% packet loss, time 195108ms]

@riatau5741

I just tried pinging google at the IP below:

ping 172.217.10.36
PING 172.217.10.36 (172.217.10.36) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 172.217.10.36: icmp_seq=104 ttl=57 time=14.1 ms
64 bytes from 172.217.10.36: icmp_seq=161 ttl=57 time=13.5 ms
64 bytes from 172.217.10.36: icmp_seq=162 ttl=57 time=12.4 ms
^C
--- 172.217.10.36 ping statistics ---
195 packets transmitted, 3 received, 98% packet loss, time 195108ms


It took a long time for those 3 messages and the 98% packet loss is disturbing.

Everything is physically in my home LAN.

I have my router set up for static IP's and I assign IPs to each of the PC's in the LAN.

I'm not sure what you are asking when you ask, "do you have IP address when in failed state?"  You want the IP address of the target receiver?

Jim A.

@wintermute000

Thank you for the suggestion. I do think I am at the point where I need to be looking at bits and bytes.

I'm not familiar with packet capture, but I did a quick search and found the tcpdump can be used for a packet dump. I'm reading up on tcpdump now.

Jim

Hello to all.

A brief introduction. I'm 71 and still writing software and maintaining a home Linux network at home. I have been doing this for about 15 years and have had minor problems, but I have always managed to keep the network up and alive. Until Monday, March 1st, when I started losing connections to the internet. Before I go on, a brief background. I was s software developer writing CAD software for integrated circuits until my company was purchased by a West Coast company and I choose not to move west. I worked for several years for Transwitch Corp as a network planning manager. I worked with lots of IT guys, but I was never down in the trenches. So, I have some decent data communications background, but to be honest I have forgotten a lot.

Now I will go on with my problem.

I have for a number of years been using the following diagram for my network, where EL is an ethernet link and SW is a switch.

DSL modem --> wifi/ethernet router --> EL --> SW --> EL --> SW --> EL - PC

After my problems started I read an article about daisy chaining switches is not good, so I have reduced my network to:

DSL modem --> router --> EL --> SW --> EL --> PC

This worked for half of today and then failed again. The symtoms of the problem are consistent. When things work, I can ping my router or www.google.com with no problem. Then mysterious, things fail. I can then ping my router, but when I ping www.google.com it times out and I get a message like: www.google.com name cannot be found. The exact message differs depending on which Linux distro I am using, but the messages always hint that there is a DNS problem.

When I get a failure, I can bypass the switch and connect directly to router and there is never a problem. Only when I go through the switch.

My understanding is that a switch is a level 2 unit and it should not interfere with the message being sent by the user to the destination.  I'm very surprised that the switch is causing a problem. I have swapped out everything from the router to the PC to make sure it was a H/W problem. I still get the same results.

So that is where I'm at. I think the next step is to start analyzing the link traffic, but I have no experience analyzing links. I think there is a good chance that timing delays are causing my problems, but I don't undertand why it would work well for years and then fail.

I am hoping one or two folks can lead me though the analysis and help resolve my problem. I cannot always respond immediately, but this is a top priority for me and in most cases I can respond within a day. In most cases, I can respond much more quickly and will try to do so.

I will leave with starting question. Should I not be able to communicate using ethernet from my PC to a swtich to a router to a DSL to the internet?

Jim A.