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Diagnosing connection issue



For a while now, I've been having an issue with an Ethernet connection.  The PC is a 64-bit system, purchased new 15 months ago, so I still consider it new.  :)

After being online for a while, the connection "drops", this occurs with both Windows Vista (32-bit, pre-installed when I bought it) and 64-bit Ubuntu, with both SeaMonkey and Firefox with both OS'.

When this occurs, if I am calling up a page, the browser will display "Looking for www.blu.org..." (for example) and just sit there.  If I then open two new tabs, one to call up the modem (Arris Touchstone telephony modem) and the other to call up the router (the new Netgear I purchased), same thing, no responses, but the "Looking for..." does not appear at the time on the two new tabs that were opened for the router and modem.

While the browser is sitting there doing nothing, I would then open a console window.  When I ping both the router and modem separately, they both respond.  This tells me that the connections between the PC and the modem, are working correctly and I am not "losing" the connection up to the modem, which could also mean that there was nothing wrong with the Linksys router that the Netgear replaced.

While this was occuring last night, I also tried to ping the primary Comcast DNS that was assigned and on two separate attempts, there was considerable packet loss from it (both exceeded 50%) with one ping response not initially displaying until the 11th attempt.  Yet the ping responses from the router and modem were perfect, no losses.  

I am now convinced that the problem is not the PC, not the Ethernet cable (tried two different cables) and not the router or modem either.  I have also checked the cable connections going from the modem to the splitter, all is well with that and also replaced the short Ethernet cable running between the router and modem.

One thought is that it would be the software (browsers) itself, however this happens with both operating systems and two different browsers.

Is there any explanation for what seems to be happening? 

Thanks.





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