Re: [Hampshire] [OT] Curious Network Issue

On Monday 19 February 2007 14:39, Sean Gibbins wrote:
> First up, this is OT to the point of being a WinXP Prof related
> issue, so read no further if that causes offence!
>
> Now, I have an odd problem with regard to my wife's Inspiron 1300's
> mini-pci wifi card. Essentially it grinds to a halt on certain
> sites, namely egg, Amazon and Tesco. From what I can gather this
> usually occurs after she has authenticated and especially when she
> is trying to pay for an item.
>
> She has tried various browsers (Explorer 6, Firefox 2 and Opera 9)
> and the problem persists. She has tried other PCs in the house,
> some of them connected via other wireless cards, some via ethernet,
> and the problem disappears. She has tried hooking up her laptop to
> an ethernet cable and the problem is not in evidence.
>
> XP is patched up to the minute and I have upgraded to the latest
> drivers for this card and the motherboard, which made no difference
> to the problem.
>
> The only consistent thing in all of this (where the problem is in
> evidence) would appear to be the card and the connection to the
> motherboard and beyond. I cannot think of any reason why the
> hardware would be at the heart of the problem, but I am stumped.
>
> I cannot buy a pcmcia card as the i1300 only has an expresscard
> slot (there aren't, as far as I can ascertain, expresscard wifi
> cards on the market yet). I don't particularly want a usb card due
> to the possibility of damage to the usb slot when it is moved
> around the house. I am dubious about buying a replacement in case I
> am throwing good money after bad.
>
> Anyone got on any thoughts on this?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Sean

I did have similarly transient problems with a wifi connection. In the
end I sorted it by cutting down the max size of transmitted packets
at the router end of the connection. It turned out to be a driver
problem which was fixed by an update but it may help in your case. It
does slow down the connection a bit. On my router (Edimax) the
setting is called 'Fragmentation threshold' which is the size at
which packets are split up for transmission.

HTH, Peter