Ok, so I've got this Netgear RP614v3 router, and a Westell WireSpeed Dual Connect DSL modem. I recently fixed my port forwarding problem (finally!!!) by enabling IP passthrough on the modem to the router. I set my computer in the DMZ of the router now so I don't have to worry about port forwarding.

However, now I've got a weird problem. My connection is fine for a few hours, sometimes almost a full 24 hours, but eventually my connection starts decaying - IRC connections time out, various applications fail to connect to the internet, and worst of all, web pages refuse to load. About 75% of the time I try to load a web page, Opera will give out one of two errors: "Internal Communication Problem" or "Remote Server Closed Connection", and thus the page doesn't load. I've occasionally had to reload a page 50 or more times before a connection goes through. Restarting the router completely fixes this until it starts again in XX hours.

The weird thing is, this only affects my computer. The other two computers on the network are completely unaffected by this. I've switched physical ports so I know that's not the problem, and me being in the DMZ also doesn't affect it (I do have a few ports forwarded to this computer if the DMZ isn't enabled, though). I'm hoping it's not my computer itself doing this, but then why would a router restart fix it? My friend says it's a memory leak in the router, but I dunno.

My main question is, if I were to buy a nice new router (ASUS WL-520gU with DD-WRT), do you guys think this would fix my problem or would I end up wasting $50? If it is the router, why is it doing this and can I fix it? If it's not, then what's the deal?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Hello Tony,

If your problem is only happening on your pc and not the others then there is no reason to assume its the router. have you checked your NIC card? your network port on your pc might be failing. it is possible that is the reason you are dropping packets from your router. i would check that 1st.

is your network port on your motherboard or is it a PCI card?

It's built-in ethernet on my MSI K9N Neo-F motherboard. The reason I assumed it was the router is because this started happening immediately after I enabled IP passthrough on the modem. I don't have any spare network cards to test with a different one but I might try disabling IP passthrough and seeing if that changes anything but it will take some time.

Can you disable the pass though on your modem? if it fixes it then we know where the problem lies.

I'll do that sometime today and I'll reply back if it worked or not today/tomorrow.

ok good enough

Alright, well I ran into a problem on my laptop which also happens to be one of the problems i was having with my main computer, which is that IRC clients completely refuse to work at all until i restart the router. I confirmed that the desktop was doing the same thing and it was. I restarted the router and both the laptop and desktop worked afterward. They're both running off the same cable and therefore using the same settings from the router. This further convinces me that the problem is with the router (possibly because i have ports forwarded to this computer?), and not the computer itself.

I'm going to be buying a new router in a few days anyway since i need a wireless one for the laptop, so hopefully that fixes this problem.