Router problem

Spank

Just replaced my Thomson Speedtouch 330 modem with a 2nd hand Belkin G Plus MIMO ADSL router.

It only came with quick start instructions & I've managed to get it up and running.

However some sites will not load.

These include hotmail (please don't tell me to dump it & get gmail, I already have several account on both services)

My account in amazon (but can connect to my online bank, so don't think the a https issue)

I can get the main page of

http://android.modaco.com/category/453/zte-blade-blade-modaco-com/

but when I try to go to a topic it only loads the banners



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Have tried the following

Rebooting the router

Running CCleaner

Running Malwarebytes & Norton

Any ideas?

Hammyman

Easy one this - well it is if you've come across it before - one of those experience things.:D

Somewhere in the router (possibly in Internet WAN or LAN) is an option called MTU. It'll probably be set to 1500. Lower it to 1472 and reboot the router. If that doesn't work, try 1458. If you're on AOL, lower it right down to 1400.

What the MTU does is set the maximum size of a packet of data sent to the ISP. If the MTU setting is higher than the ISPs, the packets data becomes fragmented*. Usually its retransmitted which sorts it 9/10 but occassionally it doesn't and it usually manifests itself by not being able to connect to certain sites - Hotmail seems to be the first ones for some reason, I suspect for some protection issue - and lowering the MTU reduces the packet size and thus eliminates fragmentation and therefore the problem. Lower it too low and you'll get throughput reduction as you'll be sending packets smaller than the ISP can work at so have wasted "space" as it were.

* if you're a gamer it also increases the ping so if you want to get lower ping times, reduce it from 1500. 1472 or 1458 seem to give the best balance between throughput and low ping.

Spank

I'm a plank I tried reducing the MTU & it didn't make a difference (it was on 1432, in the end I got it a lot higher)

What I didn't do when I got it was to do a factory reset, after I did it got a lot better.

Now I have another query, I'm trying to get the two computers to talk to each other (& get them to share the printer).

1 is using Vista 64 Ultimate the other Win7 32 Starter

When I click on the other PC I get a box asking for Username & password, but cant see how to set these up.

gaming_guy

...........

Hammyman

And if you've not put passwords on the account, do. It makes life a lot easier.

Spank

Hammyman wrote: »

And if you've not put passwords on the account, do. It makes life a lot easier.

It did, pain in the bottom having to log on every time, but I can now print from the laptop, just got to get file sharing working now.